Rekindling "Intention"

I do not desire to rise from my bed.  The alarm beckons nonetheless.  I am not resistant, especially - I’m just having a very nice time in my dozing.  I am thinking of the matcha tea that awaits me, and the ceremonial whisk I'll use for the first time.  I am thinking of the yoga mat that anticipates my arrival based on a promise made last night, and my body starts stretching as if in response to the thought.


I’m thinking of the writing that awaits me too, and how the past two mornings I spent a good 30-40 minutes performing the following ritual: stare at the screen/write a few words (30 tops)/stare at the ceiling/erase the words/choose a new topic/repeat until you’ve exhausted the options: survivor child stuff/essential oils website content/yogic philosophy on words and manifestation/home grown food update... then heave a big sigh and commence to fretting.

This is when I remember I’d chosen my topic last night as an experiment to see if I could save all that wasted time and energy.   I’d committed to write this morning about Intention. 
Ahhhh.  Deep Breath.  Up I go.

If my experience is any indicator, “Intention” is one of those words bandied about in yogic and other spiritual, healing, and creative circles with such frequency that it could be in danger of overuse, misuse, and abuse of such magnitude as to diminish its usefulness.
  
More and more I hear “intention” and its verb form “intend”  used as an alternate form of “goal” for things (activities) to be accomplished, as in “I intend to get up at 6:30 and do surya namaskar”, “I intend to get a certain amount of writing done before anyone else gets up”...

Used like this, that regal word “Intention” becomes little more than a euphemism for “to-do list”.  And I cannot, in good conscience, let this continue.
I’m launching a campaign to Preserve the Integrity of Intention.

Intention is a word fraught with meanings that get glossed over in the bustle of wordplay.  Like the rest of us, it suffices in mundane circumstances while its deeper meaning is rarely elicited or, even more rarely, sought out. Sure, it's a pointer toward that-which-I-plan-to-do.  But to use it exclusively in this way is to waste its beautiful, deeper meaning.
To Intend in the deepest sense is to purposefully imbue an event with significance.
It involves your participation, your mindful consideration, your careful attention.
Your Intention is, in itself, and act of creation.

Furthermore, it sets the stage for the unfolding of the action/event/situation for which you craft the intention in the first place. It’s like the foundational garment to creative/healing/spiritual endeavor (my dear pert-chested, straight-out-of-a-yoga-magazine, never-had-to-wear-a-bra ladies will have to extrapolate on this; jealous as I am, I have never had that blessed luxury. We write what we know, yes?).

In other words, Intention conveys not so much the gumption or the commitment to do a thing, but the container that informs the thing.  It has to do with how the action is carried out rather than the fact of it.  It’s the purpose that imbues it, gives it life, makes it wholly ours.  It’s the state we choose ahead of time to bring to the thing:  Not, “I will do surya namaskar at 6:30”, but rather, “When I do surya namaskar at 6:30 I will do so with reverence and gratitude”; not, “I will get 800 words done in time to post before work”, but rather, “I approach this writing session in the spirit of openness and discovery”, or “May the words that flow through me today offer solace or insight to myself and others”. 

In our efforts at expression we have all-to-often relinquished this sacred effort in the service of efficiency - we get caught up in the doing at the expense of the most valuable part of the process.  With intention, we take part in the granting of our own wishes.  Why would we short-change ourselves in the time we spend crafting them?

The act of Intending is a sacred internal undertaking.  A true Intention is inspired.
It takes place in the moment we connect with our Source in a sort of conference call about the matter at hand- we dial in, as it were, to That-with-which-we-are-aligned and wait for a cue.  We may sense a flurry of noise while the mind rattles off responses it thinks will be pleasing but eventually the mind quiets and the Source itself speaks.  The Source, of course, lies just beneath/above/behind/beyond the chattering mind and it is for that reason we must take the blessed time to make a connection. 

When we take the time to formulate an Intention, then, we are in fact bestowing a blessing upon ourselves and that which we hope to accomplish.  We are holding ourselves accountable for the state in which we approach it, which informs and influences its outcome in inestimable ways.

I approached my surya namaskar this morning with the intention to open further physically- and emotionally, to experience appreciation for the rediscovery of movement as a sacred practice. 

I approached my writing with the intention to rekindle my own commitment to “mindful mentations” in a public forum, that others might follow suit and enrich their own experience as well...
A sort of psycho-spiritual performance art in the service of the greater good.
May it serve us all as we carry on...
Blessings to those who conclude their 21 days today.  Blessings to those who continue.
May this time together support and sustain us all.
In the deepest of all possible ways,
~Namaste

An Alcoholic's Toast

I’ve always been the social recluse type, though most who meet me would never guess it.  It would seem almost contradictory that I’ve spent most of my adult life in a teaching role, but there you have it.  My love of analogy makes it possible for me to take any topic of discussion and wrap it in words familiar enough to each student (based on her or his background) that they come to own the information as solidly as if they’d thought of it themselves.
I’ve been told my teaching style is gregarious and funny, open and perceptive, confident and inspiring.  And I know it’s true.  I’m gifted in the art of extemporaneous speaking.

Maybe it’s because I grew up backstage in the theatre (my parents started a theatre company when I was 3 and I still sometimes joke that I was raised by a band of gypsies), but I’ve always been more comfortable in front of a crowd than when meeting people one-to-one.  Somehow it is much more vulnerable to be seen up close by a few than as a spectacle by many.

There are many factors that contributed to my eventual addiction to drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, what-have-you... but I think at the root of it was in some sense an effort to maintain this sense of distance from the “audience”.  Since beginning the long journey back to squeaky-clean (my only vice now is sugar) I’ve come to appreciate vulnerability in a new way.  I understand it now as a kind of strength.  The tell-tale tummy quivers and sudden prompts for a deep breath that used to indicate danger are now signals that growth is immanent.

In the days when I was almost perpetually “altered” I was rather prolific in my creative life.  I’d rely on the substance of the day to allow me access to the inner place where such wonder resided that I could simply tap it and watch words, colors, shapes and ideas flow without the least bit of actual work on my part.  It was exhilarating to watch art pouring out of me.  During the most ambitious phase of my substance-abuse career, I became somewhat “known” in certain artsy circles.
I also came to feel like a complete fraud.

I felt that what was expressing itself on those pages was not, as I’d thought, parts of me that I could not access without drink or drug (If they were parts of ME, why the hell could I not access them on my own after all?), but rather that I was the vehicle the intoxicants were using to express themselves.  I didn’t want to be in such a partnership any longer. 
I burned the art.

All of this is to say that now that the last drink, the final illicit toke, the day I broke the needle- now that all these are years behind me - there is only me to be found on any page bearing my moniker.  For better or worse, the only “enhancement” available to me now is my willingness to plumb the depths of my being, to be real, to be vulnerable.

It makes me feel strong to face the page on my own terms.  I have fortitude to survive and overcome, and I am mighty beyond my own reckoning.  And all of this came at great cost for which I am ever grateful.

And you know what? 

Sometimes when someone says things like, “Our challenge is almost over, let’s have a toast”, there is a distinct plummeting sound in the region of my heart.  It’s followed by a sinking feeling and a deep sigh.  Because the payback for saving my own life, for finding strength where there was dependence and steadfastness where there was weakness - is that I am disabled in celebratory mode.

For years I have avoided my co-op’s annual picnics and my neighbor’s festive barbecues for the simple fact that the pivotal activity is imbibing.  The tone is less of celebration as it is a safe container in which to get snockered. Having spent time on both sides of this fence, let me assure you who’ve never watched- there is not much about drunken people that’s amusing unless you are one of them.

What I miss is the grown-up, sophisticated glass of a good red wine (and I’ll admit a fondness for Pacific Northwest micro-brews), taken at the advent or conclusion of a significant event, in the genuine spirit of celebration.  It’s tempting at these times to remember there are books by people who are alcoholics who regained their ability to drink socially and occasionally without a catastrophic relapse.  There are probably also books by those who tried and failed, only my guess is that they are incoherent and publishers won’t touch them.  So I don’t risk it.

Oh how I’d love to hoist a pint or sip a glass with you all.  Please accept instead my heartfelt blessings and gratitude as I toast you with my morning's kale and parsley juice.  Perhaps I’ll spin around in my chair to share that giddy sense of communion we call “getting tipsy”.

Wrangling with Gentleness

Got back on the yoga mat yesterday, thanks to a prompt from @amypalko about -returning (http://is.gd/d4KrZ).

The return to the mat was a victory in the sense that I declared it a priority, made time for it, and when the time came I arrived intending to participate fully.  I downloaded the video that @zenpeacekeeper so generously created for the #215800 participants, and arranged the space such that I could see the screen and move on the mat without kicking things off of tables,  and came to it very pleased with myself.

Before much time had passed I was grappling with grave disappointment. 

Both of my knees are prone to hyperextension and are easily injured.  One is still recovering from a contusion which apparently take months rather than weeks to heal.  My physical therapist has suggested it might be imprudent to expect to kneel ever again.  And yet the video, appropriate for beginners, asked me pretty early on to sit on my heels with toes bent under. 

As Marianne suggested this might be an intense stretch for the feet, I struggled to arrange myself in anything remotely upright with my upper body while keeping the weight off of the knees.  The result?  I squatted with my toes bent under as requested, but with my butt about four inches off the heels in order to accommodate the pressure in the knees while leaning forward at such a preposterous angle that to actually perform the arm stretches would have looked like a convoluted pranam to the opposite wall - angled as I was with my torso more parallel than perpendicular to the floor.  Eventually I gave up, but not entirely. I sat on my butt and did the arm stretches.

As we completed the sitting-on-toes segment and moved on, I felt the sting from not having thought this through- how had I entertained visions of myself in strong and solid warrior, triangle, and pyramid poses when “easy sitting posture” and child’s pose are beyond my capacity?  And most importantly, how was I going to come away with at least a modicum of self-respect so that I did not cast the entire enterprise in the unmitigated disaster category?  I’d just have to mitigate it is all.

To mitigate - to make softer, less severe.  To lessen in force or intensity.  What would need mitigation after all- the fact that my knees interpret child’s pose as punishment?  Or the fact that I maintain my well-learned tendency to see failure of any kind as an occasion for punishment?  Ahhh, I remember now.  We never know what kind of work we’ll do on the mat, do we?

Once we hit the mat, all bets are off.  It’s like open season for transformative occurrences. And in the beginning at least (it’s the only perspective I can call mine) it may take unexpected forms.  While I’d envisioned the exquisite tug of sinews releasing to the ends of their tethers, I was instead confronted with the daunting task of being gentle with myself. 

I can’t speak for all survivors but I imagine it’s a shared trait - being gentle with myself does not come naturally.  At a gut level gentleness toward myself is interpreted as a weakness of sorts. It’s seen as a cop-out, laziness, or abject failure, all of which point to unworthiness. To be gentle is to accept less than perfection, which is simply not an option - regardless of peril to equilibrium, well-being, or sanity. 

This “inherited” perspective is little more than the athletic drive to increase performance, only inverted and convoluted by its application to the psyche instead of the body.

Huh.  What a terrifically surprising turn-around.  What a stunning revelation.  My task on the mat this day was not to force, coerce, or subdue anything other than the tendency to drive myself away from gentleness.  I had come to the session prepared to use all the determination at my disposal in order to NOT give up on challenging poses; to prove myself worthy, to make myself proud. 

Instead I found I was being directed to apply every iota of athlete’s mind (just keep going, just keep going, just keep...) to insist that I sit on my butt instead of my knees.  It took precisely the same amount of determination that it takes to go another round of any physical exercise - another lap in the pool, 10 minutes on the bike (another 100 words on the page, come to think of it).  There was an insistence, a pushing (“just a little bit more, come on- you can do it”) into gentleness that absolutely happened for the first time on that mat.  Never before has it been preferable to refrain from possible self-damage in the effort to prove myself.

Surprisingly, this act of self-preservation made it not only possible but exciting to get back up and engage when the poses on the screen were within my ability. 
Instead of wallowing in self-defeat and bemoaning my physically induced limitations, I was able to revel in the parts that I can do.  I came away feeling physically more solid; there’s more space in my movements and strength in my stance. Today my body is achy but not broken.

What did break on that mat yesterday was a lifelong limiting assumption that I must be treated harshly in order to excell.  No amount of intellectual understanding was going to teach me that; no level of skilled counseling could have made the experience so tangible. Ah, all the benevolent masters of the universe must be having a great chuckle at my expense - and I gratefully grant it to them:

In order to imbibe the lesson of gentleness, I had to be brought to my knees.

Feet on the Path of No Turning Back

So it happened again...

Yesterday I promised my partner I’d dedicate the day’s writing time to creating fresh, new content for our webpage.  It’s daunting because I’ve said the same things so many times it was coming out stuffy and stale.  How to find that genuine voice and yet remain professional?  How to be compelling enough to make people want to explore further?  The whole litany.

Flustered by the audacity of the blank page staring back at me, secretly feeling it’d be easier to delve back into the gut-tangling implications of having actually sent the audacious epistle I’d just penned, I took refuge in the hope that I might find something  to ponder on in Susannah’s photos Bindu had posted the night before for our writing prompts the following day.

That the first two were chosen and positioned the way they were- did anyone else feel a stirring inside that set the tear buds to blossoming?

There is something mystical in the portrayal of any pathway.  This one, though, struck me in some deep resounding way as the exact path I’m on in this moment: In sepia tones it becomes timeless, the light makes it simultaneously ethereal and vaguely unsettling because it’s indirect.  What’s lit up is not the path per se, but the tall grasses surrounding it - because the traveler cannot see what lies beyond the grasses it becomes a tunnel of sorts - a topless tunnel, but one from which the traveler cannot stray until the path’s conclusion... and there is no way to discern what awaits there.
Hand in hand with the unsettled sense, though, is a deeply felt serenity.  I find myself taking one of those deep, calm breaths that come when I accept the task ahead of me.  There is suddenly a feeling of protection in gazing at the photo, and I am softly stunned to recognize it as coming from within.
It’s as if I have seen this pathway from many vantage points in times past, have known all along that I would need to cross it in order to continue in my unfolding - and that in this moment the fortitude and the courage and the extreme rightness of the task ahead of me have converged in a feeling of exhilaration.  That it is tinged with trepidation just adds to the thrill because the fear is now a companion instead of a barrier.

To scroll ever so slightly down to the next photo is to set the tear blossoms cascading as if at some great holy festival. 

It is said that the feet are the repository of spiritual energy, and the feet of the master are regarded with reverence in many traditions.  I’ve spent hours reveling in the contemplation of a certain set of holy feet myself; when I lived in a place dedicated to meditation and study in the Indian tradition, I used to arrive in the temple at 2 am to tend to the ablution and adornment, with sandalwood paste and flowers, of the padukas - the sandals representing the spiritual power of the master - before the stream of seekers came to place their reverent foreheads there.

But I digress...

From this perspective the feet are directly under me.  I feel the coolness on my toes even as I write (I have the photos on the screen with the page I’m writing).  These feet, while probably Susannah’s, can only be mine while I gaze at the photo.  Importantly, the metal thingamajig in the upper corner assumes (in my mind at least) the role of one of those great sturdy clamps that holds bridges onto the structure from whence they proceed.  As the two photos are arranged (bridge on top, tootsies beneath), I have the sense of gazing out at the bridge before me, and then down at my own feet the moment before I step onto it.

This is the moment, then.  The great “start where you are and keep going no matter what” moment I’ve been craving all my conscious life.

And the petals- yes, the petals.  I can construct a story to describe how they’ve been tossed in the air with great fanfare to herald the historic moment, bestowing blessings from my benefactors for the journey ahead. 
Or perhaps they have fallen all around me as the poetic manifestation of these burning tears.  Perhaps for once I bless my own feet as they stand so bravely beneath me, ready to do my bidding - to carry me along this path on which there is no turning back.  Bathing in the holy river of my own tearwater I feel unburdened and purified.  And changed. 
I imagine the photo playing out in a vignette where the tears fall as petals until they cover the feet and in some magical way I am able to kneel there and place my own head upon them - to bless and be blessed in a gesture so earnest, with a reverence so complete, it feels like a vow.

Gratefully Indebted to You All

I love this picture.  It says, "Just because you're growing, doesn't mean you won't get tied in knots".

If I know what I’m writing about when I start, 800 words typically flow fluidly from my fingertips in a little over an hour.  Yesterday I was nearly four hours in and still stalled at 696 words when I had to give up the topic for the day: one of those “letters you’re never going to send”. 

Of course near the end of the process I noted that Bindu’s post for the day mentioned the virtue of letter writing as an exercise during the #215800 challenge.  This has been a catharsis-evoking practice of mine for many years and it provides some of the juiciest, most genuine expression I’ve ever gotten out of myself.  The inner censor gets distracted and wanders away, leaving me to pour forth the truth with something akin to wild abandon.

Yesterday’s struggle announced itself when I realized that I was actually going to send the thing.

Doing so will have (probably already is having) irrevocable repercussions.  It will be the impetus for a round of inner work the magnitude of which I can scarcely fathom and which once started, I am obliged to ride to the finish.

Just thinking that that missive has been released into the world, I am breathless. Whether with exaltation or terror, it is hard to say. 

What I do know is that as I got ready to leave the house yesterday I found I had to choose shoes that make me stand a little taller, hold myself with a little more strength, make me feel a little more centered.  Then I proceeded to blast my psyche with the music of bold, strong, battle-torn women ranging from Nina Simone to Johnatha Brooke, with a sufi qawwali thrown in for good measure.  And at the end of the day, well past midnight and fairly racked with exhaustion and apprehension (“oh, what have I done?”), I came across the letter to which Bindu had linked on her post for the day.  Thus I discovered the Martha Wainright song the author had used as a soundtrack while writing, and ended the long night in gasping sobs.

Ah, and so it begins. Or rather, continues...

To say that this challenge has been significant is to leave out far too much of the equation. 
It’s given me control over a portion of my day that I never thought to claim as my own before. 
It’s opened portals of perception previously clogged due to inattention.  Life is resplendent with detail and nuance again.
This challenge has created a community out of strangers, some of whom I can nearly guarantee would not have come together in any more conventional way - creating an intimate bond that nonetheless is also somehow anonymous and therefore safe for everyone.

The greatest gift of all, though, is that it’s made me confront myself in a way that is as utterly terrifying as it is exhilarating.  It’s put things in motion that I’d been comfortably avoiding for eons; it’s compelled me to give myself homework of the highest order- and to turn in the assignment every day, no matter what.
I said in an earlier post that I wish to earn the trust of the old woman I hope to become.  Trust is a long time coming with me (and apparently with her too), but I’m beginning to feel that I’ve got her approval.  I feel her silent support as if she were my ancestor rather than the future me.

There is no question that years from now I will point to June 2010 as a pivotal, even defining moment in my life.  This is the time I learned to take up the space I need to thrive, and to revel in the sense of strength singing through my sinews when I stretch my self (literally and literarily). 

This is the time I’ll remember developing the tenacity to engage in the struggles necessary to be free from the past (to grow despite the knots)- when disruption, trepidation, and even abject terror were no longer good enough excuses for keeping the monsters safe in their pens, fed and watered with my own limiting fears.

This is the time I’ll remember walking out into the world as if wearing a slightly different skin- one that fits better, feels more comfortable, in some important way more “me” than I’ve ever been before...

Of course I am still replete with insecurities, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities.  I’m sure they’ll continue to baffle, confuse, and confound me with the very human aspect of every endeavor.  But what has happened in these two weeks is that I’ve come to look at these elements of my being as tools rather than liabilities.  They are a jumping-off place, the impetus for engaging in the work that moves me forward - out of the past and into a frank, authentic, and engaging future.

I am gratefully indebted to you all.

Comic Relief: Lesbian Recycling

The title Lesbian Recycling might give the reader pause.  It might invoke images of Wednesday Addams inquiring about the girl scout cookies being proffered for her consideration, “Are they made from real girl scouts?”.

One might be tempted, though with slightly tongue-in-cheek trepidation, to ask: This Lesbian Recycling - are we talking about the recycling program on the Greek Island of Lesbos?  Or are we talking about the women-who-love-women kind, the lesbian of modern lore?  And if so, is the recycling being carried out by the lesbians, or for their benefit?  Unless...

Oh my, oh dear (insert Deity of choice), are we talking about the recycling OF lesbians?

If the idea has fairly set the reader’s mind to whirring, and to wondering from what side of the mystic Land O’Lez the writer is coming, let all be reassured that the perspective on these pages is that of a real, life-long woman lover who has, whether on account of her winning personality or the sheer length of her career, managed to sidestep most of the stereotypes attributed to her kind by those of little social experience or tolerance.

That said, there exist in the world of lady-loving-ladies certain idiosyncratic features of social interaction that bear explanation to the uninitiated.  If the reader has no lesbian of his or her own to explain these peculiarities, this missive may help lift the shroud of mystery on at least one such feature.

Recently a co-worker was explaining the complexities of her current dating scenario: the boy in question is someone she’s known since she was ten, and he is the ex-boyfriend both of her sister’s friend and her own cousin.  They never considered one-another as potential dating material while those relationships were taking place, but now it makes sense and feels right.  She is concerned for the feelings of the others so close to her; can they rise above it and give her their blessings, or will it be a mar on their relations forever?  When she finally stopped for a breath I said, “Sounds like you all are taking a page out of the Book of Lesbian”!

Since I came out in a small community (Coeur d’Alene Idaho in the 1980‘s small enough for ya? Aryan Nations and all?) I originally assumed it was simply a matter of the miniscule number of lesbians in circulation (it was highschool in a redneck town) that accounted for the fact that the girl that I was dating was the best friend of the girl whose boyfriend was the twin brother of my best friend, and that she had always had a crush on her.   But wait!  Who had a crush on whom?  Exactly.  And they eventually dated, after we broke up of course.  Who dated?  After you broke up with... What? 
Yup.  Mmmm-Hmmm. Lesbian Recycling.

Let it be known that the phrase “Lesbian Recycling Program” had not yet been coined in these early, fledgling years.  For that to happen I would first have to witness the phenomenon in larger circles.  As my sphere of lesbionic experience widened I found it happening on a much grander scale: whole groups of friends could practically devise a board game based on which person’s ex-lover was now with the best friend of that person’s first love; which two had previously dated the one who was now with the one whose best friend secretly had a thing for her (and let’s be clear: it is practically a prerequisite for Lesbian 101 to fall in love with one’s best friend at least once).  And it's not that woman-lovers are a promiscuous bunch- in fact the arrangement-of-choice tends to incline toward committed monogomy.  It's just that we run in circles that are- well, spirals. 

The Recycling term came into play once I lived in Spokane Washington:  When my girlfriend and I went to visit an ex of mine and her new girlfriend, we discovered that The Girl I’d Always Swooned Over was also there- with a girlfriend of her own.  During the long summer that ensued (dubbed the “summer stranger than others” on a mixed tape commemorating the time) in which my girlfriend broke up with me to go back to her ex but instead wound up with my ex and then her girlfriend (yup, the ones we were visiting earlier).  The Girl I’d Always Swooned Over left her girlfriend for me (and oh yes we all lived together) and then took off for three days to straighten out her head while we two did our best to support each-other in the strangeness and confusion of it all.

And this is the thing that Lesbians seem to do in romantic crisis: there is a prevailing tendency toward rising above the petty bitterness that surrounds the ending of  relationships.    Indeed it’s sometimes hard to tell whether a pair has split or not. We may be hurt, bereft, indeed shaking in our shoes with the immensity of our loss - but we very often grapple with the ensuing feelings of acrimony toward our exes or our ex’s future partners (or our current partners’ exes for that matter) with a transcendent sort of beatific idealism that baffles uninformed onlookers. 

Indeed, it can be baffling from within the inner circle as well.  When the feeling of forgiveness, or moving-beyond-it-ness arises in a situation of turmoil, pain, and loss, it is at first so incongruous as to be disorienting.  Whether it’s true that women have inherently nurturing natures, or are innately forgiving, or whether we just have a heightened need for internalized drama, lesbians have a strong predilection for remaining friends with their exes.

Maybe it’s that we seem to lack the off-switch that makes people stop caring about others just because the form of the relationship has shifted.
Alternately, there might be a lesbian tendency to fast-forward through the dating process and move straight into serious relationships, or it could be that the lesbian penchant for loving one’s friend works in reverse as well - that we value our friends so deeply we are reluctant to let go of them just because we’re no longer a matched set.

Whatever the underlying reason, when we reach the “rising above” point, there is a sense that we are bigger than ourselves, that we have the capacity to be magnanimous and perhaps transcend the bounds of conventional limitations... to be friends with our ex - and sure, our partner’s ex, and her best friend who’s begun dating our own ex... and to contribute meaningfully to one-another’s lives just because we are all incredible, smart, and progressive women.  There is also the tickle in the back of the brain that makes us wonder if we’ve just gone mad, but by then the deed is done.

When we are at our best I believe we appreciate the fact that the person we love has been challenged and blessed and therefore enriched by those who went before us, just as I believe that when we let someone go we (eventually, perhaps- nobody says this is instantaneous or without serious effort) we can bless their path and those they will come to love.  At our less-than best?  We covet security and find that the entry into our lives of any interloper (real or imagined) causes us to hold our breath, pick fights, and harbor anxiety.  We are all of us always holding out for the next transcendent moment, are we not?


Post Scripts:
1) Let those readers who are of the hetero, male, bi, transgender or other persuasions not believe for an instant that I believe the characteristics above described pertain only to those of the lesbian ilk.  We are each and every one of us transcendent, delicate, stuck and strong in our own ways.  I was only trying to be funny.
2) Oh, and for those who are wondering about the girl who was left by the Girl I Always Swooned Over?  Years later, in a different city and state, my partner at the time (not The Girl) and I broke up for our mutual benefit and went out to celebrate. Guess who we ran into?  Guess who she dated next (hint: it wasn't me)?  You're catching on.

What it Means to Change My Life

For the second time during the #215800 challenge, I concluded the writing portion of my daily exercise only to discover that a suggestion had been issued to write on a particular musing... “what does it mean to change your life?”

Ironically, each time this happens I find that what’s already on the page is in a mystifying sort of alignment with the process...

Today was the first day in the challenge that the writing itself was a struggle.  I couldn’t be authentic in my memoirial (new word!) banter because the of the gymnastics of staying “identity neutral” regarding some of the living characters in my narrative.  I felt frustrated and thwarted and just wanted to give into a “damn the torpedoes” rant just to release some of the pressure.

I wished I could just stop typing and do yoga, but I was on a timeline so I tried to write about yoga instead.  I’ve never stuck with yoga long; even though it feels brilliant when I start, I have a history of getting hurt on my own and don’t trust just any teacher (I was spoiled because most classes I’ve taken were John Friend or his students).   Of course there are the logistics of adding yoga to an already full life,  but in writing I see that now I’ve begun to hunger for it. 

I recognized on a visceral level the role that yoga plays in the transformation that this challenge is pushing me toward.  I’ve done at least savasana each day, and I’ve added a small amount of asana work a few times.   Most notably though, I’ve discovered that when I am done writing difficult things I have to take warrior pose or scream.  I need to take up space with a strong physical stance, feel the sinews in my forearms tingle as I engage those muscles in both directions at once. My body itself is insisting that I expand beyond what was possible only two weeks ago! 

What does it mean to change my life?  It means holding a posture of strong vulnerability while the needed changes take place, excruciating and heart-stopping as they may be: to stay “open during renovation”.  There are few things more terrifying than claiming one’s own power.  The responsibility and the authority are astonishing in scope, because our power really is that great.
Changing my life means doing the work anyway, because to do otherwise is to be less than authentically myself.  It’s uncomfortable to realize that waiting to do the work is simply no longer an option.  

The stepping-off point is like getting a tattoo: you want it, you ask for it, and it hurts like hell!  You can’t change your mind part-way through, and you’re screwed if you flinch- so you find whatever reserves of grit and raw determination you have hidden deep within (and it is always there, make no mistake) and then it’s over! Only it’s not.  It’s raw and tender like the  wound it is.  You have to protect it by exposing it, make it strong my keeping it supple. Amidst all the paradox, you have to keep in mind that the whole thing was your idea.  Yeah, doing inner work is like getting a tattoo on your soul.

I hired a therapist on my lunch break yesterday because this childhood-related  “breakthrough project”  is long overdue. I call it a project because I have a specific goal, I know the issues and the roadblocks, and I have some sense of the work I have ahead of me.  I include the term breakthrough to remind me that what I am going for is to get to the other side of the murkiness and not just to wallow in it. 
I’ve hired a professional because I need someone whose perspective is steady to help me navigate the slippery times when I can’t tell “then” from “now”, and to keep me focused on the reason I choose to continue:   First break down, then break through.  I do well with strategies.

I knew this project was immanent but held off for the same reason that I haven’t found a yoga teacher: you can’t tell who is right for you until you invest the time and energy and risk your psyche or your knees (depending on which professional we’re talking about here), and spend a lot of time choosing your team when all you really want to do is actually turn up and do the work!  Who wants to do the “intro rap” on their deepest and darkest over and over again?

Still, I am just as rotten shrink for myself as I am a yoga instructor.  For once, the wisest advice is to look outside myself - so I did, and I think I’ve found a gem. 

Historically, once I’ve landed in therapy I am a very serious study.  I saw a counselor in Seattle who once told me, “I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as you do.  I give you a suggestion and by the next week you’ve grappled with it.  You’re sort of fearless that way.” 

All well and good, all mighty and fearless perhaps, in identifying patterns and confronting how I have limited myself because of my past - but this kind of work has done nothing to actually help me resolve it.  In my own estimation I have yet to bring forward my truly fearless aspect, but the prospect of doing so makes me simultaneously giddy and calm in a sort of unified-with-the source kind of way.

Sleeping In: The Cost of Self-Indulgence

Sleeping in is now the most subversive act in my repertoire. 

Make note, it’s no governmental regime I’m undermining with the snooze button set to stun, it’s my own precious daily routine... a routine which has come to mean more to me than I could have possibly forseen.

Mere weeks ago, rising at 8 am would have been a rare and bravely executed exception to the rule, performed for only the most significant events (be they onerous or erstwhile).  Not since I lived in an ashram environment eight years ago has there been a hint of regularity in my schedule.  Being self-employed has its hazards.

Today, 8 am is precisely an hour and a half late.  Not only would I usually be circling the 800 mark by now in terms of the number of written words it takes to start rubbing up against the breakthrough inherent in the practice, but I’d be on the second cup of tea and the construction noises outside the window wouldn’t have started yet.  Nor would the cat be yowling at my partner to get up and play chase-the-fleecy-thing with her.

About two weeks before this writing challenge began, I had an unexpected healing encounter.  In addition to my home enterprise, I work at the local food co-op.  We had a woman come in who was to train the staff on a line of flower essences, and part of that training was to give us individual consultations.  She showed us a list of of emotional traits and asked us to consider which ones apply to ourselves in preparation for our sessions.

When I met with her, she asked what struck me from the list.  I’d seen two opposite characteristics that I hoped to balance: being driven to work to exhaustion, and procrastination.  I explained that I’m prone to a sort of Hyperfocus ADD behaviour when working on an important project, wherein all self-care falls into disrepair and neglect. I also have what I perceived as a lackadaisical approach to my home business; there are days I just don’t feel like creating a newsletter or updating databases or making phone calls, and so I don’t.  I usually don’t do it the next day either.  This was the dilemma I presented to this dear, soft-spoken woman with the white braid at the back of her head.

She listened attentively and patiently, then leaned ever so slightly forward and said, “Yes, but where does the sadness come from?”

Oh, so this is how it’s going to be, I thought. Nobody told us she was an empath.  Geez.  Her blue eyes sparked at me, waiting.  So I told her.  I told her, and she listened, and she gave me advice that was related not in the least to the essences she’s come to share with us.   She made a point of saying that I’m not lazy, I’m chronically exhausted and need to learn how to stop and truly rest. She spoke of “rhythm” when she advised me to wake, eat, and sleep at the same times each day. She assured me that I will be compensated for the sacrifices I’ve made for the sake of my early antagonist.  She gave me a hug and sent me on my way with my little gift bag of goodies.

In the days that followed, I took her advice to heart as if she’d been my own fairy grandmother.  I began waking earlier in order to have an actual breakfast meal.  I embraced the notion of “rhythm” where I’d failed to accomplish the same thing under different names (regularity, discipline, routine) for years. 

Mornings have become my gift to me; rising a wee bit earlier each day, making my cup of tea and padding in sock feet to where the keyboard sits expectantly, allowing a more genuine me to reveal herself before the bustle of other people and activities begins.

The tea itself is an important part of the routine.  Having spontaneously broken a serious coffee habit two months ago, I’ve come to revel in the vast variety of experiences available through the medium of tea.  We have a full cupboard dedicated to my experimental impulses in this arena, the most recent addition to which is Matcha - that brilliant green powder celebrated and treated with such reverent attentiveness in Japanese Tea Ceremonies.  I tried it first at work, and it left me with a sublime inner sense that I could only describe by saying, “it feels like a great hug on a a beautifully rainy day”.

Apart from the health benefits, the rapturous flavor experience and the bliss-buzz the beverage itself imparts, the ceremony holds a growing fascination for me.  The spare and deliberate movements, the quiet humility , the two-point turns of the bowl at various points (the meaning of which I have yet to discover) bespeak a reverence I hope to nurture back to health in my own regard of daily routines.  I’ve begun to crave rising early enough in the morning to partake in a solitary ritual of centering and self-care with which to sanctify the day.

Today I missed out on that sacred jump-start because of the extra time spent wallowing amongst my pillows in soporific glory.  My penance is that, as opposed to the idyllic writer’s dreamday of three days ago, I am now tapping out my mental sputterings from the waiting room of a car dealership while my vehicle is serviced, the only available seat wedged next to the parts area with its wafting essence of rubber and grease.  Vying to divert my attention from the keyboard are intermittent calls from my tax guy (quarterlies are due today, darlings) and the monstrous flat screen unavoidably in front of me with the World Cup proceedings on display there.  This very moment I am actively efforting to blank out the commentators’ voices and focus instead on the constant drone of the noisemakers of the crowd.  It’s as if I’m in a bubble in a beehive, immersed in the buzzing sounds but without fear of a sting.  From another angle, it might sound like the gravely, booming, breath-stilling sounds that call Tibetan monks to prayer. 

I take a deep breath myself and reach for the stainless steel cylinder at my side...

I got some extra doze time, for sure - but I’ve had to take my ceremonial tea in a to-go cup.

Resistance and Breakthroughs: 800 is the magic number

Yesterday I wrote the first nitty-gritty, difficult stuff since beginning this challenge; the stuff I have hesitation to publish and resistance to writing, which ties my guts in knots and stifles my breath with even the intention to start typing. Even as I recognize that actually moving the events onto the printed page is an exercise that can relieve and release me, that in fact is paramount to my well-being, (the ancient egyptians believed that if you died with emotional issues unresolved you would be unable to enter the afterworld), there is this resistance which intrigues me.

One might say that waxing philosophical on the resistance aspect of the exercise is tantamount to avoiding it altogether - it does, after all, stanch the flow of the discomforting verbiage and take the focus in a different direction. This thinking is probably spot-on.  I also believe that making friends with this resistance will shed some light, otherwise inaccessible, on the entire process.

Let me be clear that I have volumes of personal journals detailing many of the same childhood events I intend to grapple with here, in this more formal setting of intentional authorship.  Once pierced, the quivering membrane that holds “it all” in and keeps it from spilling into my everyday existence ruptures like a water balloon and soon my rice paper pages are dripping with ink and tears  (I suspect it’s the same thing that happens when I flip into my fear response; there is no such thing as a slow leak).  So it’s not a general reluctance to broach the subject that keeps me bound in hesitation. 

It’s probably, in part, an irrational expectation to be punished for “speaking my truth” (as overworked and approaching cliche as this phrase is, there are some circumstances where it is precisely what I mean, and so...).  I’ve spent decades keeping it under wraps, forging cordial relations with the parties involved instead of the confrontational ones I tried in my earlier years.  When I attempt to discuss the events from those trying times, I lose my grip on the spanda-karikas’ admonishment to turn within when emotions hit an elevated pitch; things spin out of control, I lose my mental footing and things start moving so fast that my brain feels like someone’s injected icewater into its convoluted folds.  Not willing to initiate another such episode without professional mediation, I’ve opted instead to just skate along on good manners- chomping down on the groove in my tongue until I can get home to make my rice paper soggy once again.

While writing it all down in journals feels liberating in one sense, there is another aspect of the practice that feels like I am just moving from one cell to another in the same prison: still, nothing is resolved.  There is no real freedom because in my journal I am the only audience.  Though I feel spent, shaken, and in some important way hollowed out, the vociferation and the catharsis it announces is nonetheless all in my head... nobody has heard me.

In making friends with my hesitation I realize it also has to do with the fact that I am someone who understands the power of words.  For whatever reason it’s long been clear to me that there is no static reality for which we need but find accurate descriptors in order to communicate.  The fact is that reality is a dynamic, continuously unfolding event to which we are steadfast contributors whether we use this power mindfully (as we are implored to do in the yogic texts) or whether we let it go on autopilot (which regrettable consequences we see all around us).

Because it is my experience and conviction that when we focus on a thing we breathe life into it, that we become like that upon which we meditate, that when we call a thing by name we draw its closer to ourselves (this is why every tradition has a praise-singing component), I fear delving into this work because I don’t want to add to the burdens of the planetary psyche by contributing more “difficult stuff”.  Because the magic of creating reality through our words also works to compound our misery, isolation, and delusion when turned in the wrong direction.  Why would I want to breathe life into a childhood I’ve been trying to escape for more than 40 years?  Why would I want to become more like my abuser, molester, or the child that went through it?  And why would I want to draw the victim role closer to myself?  Unless...

(Cue Angelic Chorus, Beams of Light From Above and Within)

A great being once said, “you go through the breakdown to get to the breakthrough”.
A mere 6 words from the designated 800, the hoped-for epiphany has been dropped upon my head with a “pop” and a cascade that reinforces the water balloon motif like a literary bonus pack.

I revel:

What if I focus on the breakthrough? On rescuing the child rather than just repeating her story?  What if I meditate upon a woman with the strength and resolve to walk through this fire and come out glowing? What if I call out, not to victim or antagonist, but to the survivor and the supporters, some of whom I’ve yet to meet?  What, for that matter, if I write each day until my eyes are brimming with the warm tears of breakthrough as they are now?  If I take them as my morning ablution to mark the day as sacred?

An Authentic Voice At Last!

I woke today knowing that I was going to make some tea and go to the computer, write for a couple of hours, and go to work.  It was radical and revolutionary (I’ve claimed to be a writer most of my life but no fly on my walls would ever validate the claim) and yet at the same time perfectly natural.  In no less than five days, the rhythm and necessity of writing every day has entered me with a sweet and subtle pulsing that would say (if it could speak) “you are more you now than you’ve ever been”.

Today’s content was more daunting than usual, pertaining as it did to website content for the business that my partner and I operate (we agreed to capitalize for at least one day on the fact that I am a captive audience to my own keyboard and get some fresh mojo on our homepage).  Our current “presence” (if you can call it that) is bland and un-engaging, written as it was on the first day we learned how to work our iWeb, in a sort of frenzy to get something- anything- on the page in front of us.  Since its inception, we’ve been engaged and distracted in so many other ways that it has just kind of languished there like an old vase whose most recent stems have long since turned to sludge.

Faced with a blank page with the stated task of engaging the interest, curiosity, and commitment of people as-yet unknown, I have a tendency to go into hyper-formal mode.  What I produce in these states tends to be the sort of fluff that one might expect to see in a framed needlepoint hanging outside the bathroom in a narrow and heavily wood-paneled corridor in some nameless place... replete with superlative exclamations and extravagant promises of the lengths to which I will go to serve my clients (at which time I stop myself and say, “Wait. Is this even true?  What if I don’t hold their hand the entire time?  What if I don’t want to be available “any time”?).

The other tendency is to go all info-head, producing a stream-of-consciousness ramble about efficacy and purity and all manner of elements that pertain in a number of important ways to the issue at hand (essential oils) that, while scientifically validated, painstakingly documented, and altogether very, very fascinating, nonetheless have the effect of stunning the hapless visitor into a soporific unwillingness to engage any further, lest they become responsible for the same burden of information just hefted upon them.

So.  The quest begins to find a voice- a professional voice.  Quite unlike the veda-quoting, sanskrit spouting scholastic pursuits which have given me such thrills, or the justifiably “angst in my pants” memoir-ishness that keeps insisting it could be my salvation if I’d only sit down and write it, and far distant also from the down-home accounts of what we’ve got growing on the organic farm plot or ranting against the industrial-military complex and extractive economy mindsets... a professional voice must appeal to those who may not care a whit about all the myriad of other things that I am outside my profession (and indeed might disagree).

To my great astonishment I saw flashes today of genuine, authentic “self” come out in the playful way I explained how people get paid to do what I do (this topic’s always resulted in a sort of stilted, awkward result in the past, because this is the part where I fear being judged or misunderstood in my intentions - I will, after all, ask them to pay at some point).  Today though, I took a different approach and diverged briefly on Right Livelihood.  Suddenly what emerged was no longer “well first you sign up for this thing, and then you do this other thing” it was a confident breezy voice streaming from my fingertips saying something about service and dignity and integrity and engaging in meaningful work that actually pays - and I said, “there it is!  That’s us!”  A little bit sassy, a wee bit bold, but always respectful and always keeping grace as the centerpiece, even when being cheeky.

So pleased was I to find this character staring back at me from the screen onto which I’d released her that I did a little dance and yelped a little yelp.  She was bearing witness to that which I’ve come to know in my marrow in just five days of consistent writing: this is my way back to authenticity.  To reclaim the parts of me I cherish, to gain the trust of the old woman I hope to become, to live authentically in this life I must write “like my head is on fire”.  I don’t know who coined that phrase, but it’s been running through my head all day... probably because it’s true.

Embracing Idyl, and Care and Feeding of the Inner Child

I am alone in my home for the first time in months. 
Cup of tea at my side, laptop perched in the light of the sunbeam coming through the window at my side - filtered light though, so there is no glare, only the soft halo-ific infusion of golden effervescence over my right shoulder and a patch of the wooden floor which is alight with such a glory it actually seems pleased with itself.  There is a table in this room on which are arranged a number of beautiful and sacredly evocative elements; I am facing in such a way that they remain in my peripheral vision as I type, as if giving their silent benediction.  Peripherally also, though on the other side of my visual field, are the bookshelves that house those hefty tomes for the sake of which I labored and tormented myself in the pursuit of scholarship that, as it turns out, was meant to be mine in the internal domain and not, as I had originally intended, the occupation around which my identity would coil itself - at long last, accomplished and worthy.

The morning is beatific in so many ways; it’s the kind of morning every writer must hold in her or his mind as some kind of ideal.  Frankly I’ve always had a sense of envy toward those writers who are able to carve out a space and time where all of these auspicious elements converge. Experiencing it for myself, for the very first time, I am having a little writer’s bliss fit.

The tea itself is a statement of my values and pleases me greatly; it comes from a small fair trade cooperative in Kenya which works only with small independent farms rather than the behemoth companies that have reduced that country’s biodiversity to a damnable level for their own profit, all of the profits go toward clothing and educating orphans through an organization that does not endeavor to replace the native culture with its own (which, for all the good they do, most missionary organizations tend to do - intentionally or not- by the very nature of their mission).  Lastly, the bag is tied with a cord made from banana leaves that is decorated with beads made from recycled magazines - and this is placed inside a simple brown box which is decorated with scenes of village life by women artisans out of banana leaves.

Ah, to live in a world where every consumer choice could reflect one’s own values with the crystal clarity of this one cup of tea!

I have to admit, at least to myself, that the reason I’ve habitually robbed myself of moments such as these is not really that I believe them to be unattainable, or the dominion of those more accomplished than I.  I’ve even invested heavily in the argument (which I still believe at times, it is so enabling and idea) that I can’t decide what to write about.  Areas of interest are disparate and equally compelling/deserving/urgent. 
These include:

• memoir-esque musings on my childhood circumstances that could give Augusten Burroughs a run for his money;

• a continuation of my university works on the matrika shakti- that power of words to create the entire world (and the fact that it’s at work even when we’re not aware of it, which is a strong endorsement for mindfulness practices!);

• educational materials (newsletters, blogs, training materials, website content) around the source of my primary livelihood, which revolves around essential oils.  I help people understand the general concept of essential oils as healing agents, and the particular value of using Young Living oils to achieve the desired results for the purity, potency, and integrity they deliver in a non-regulated industry.  I also serve as mentor to those in my group, as they learn to use and share the oils with others.  Writing in this vein often finds me stymied by the technological avenues by which the information could become available, and leads to frustration and much swearing at the computer;

• passions and pursuits around sustainability and food security, urban homesteading, and advocating to be allowed to keep chickens within our city’s limits;

• the curriculum for teaching permaculture concepts to 1st-4th graders when they visit the farm on which our local permaculture guild is preparing to create a demonstration food forest for the public...

Really, really... it is so simple to wrap myself in the enabler’s cloak and say I can’t decide on which topic to write - when I’ve just illustrated that once I start in on any one of them, the absorption becomes so complete that I’d be at 800 words before the tea kettle was at a boil!  The task is to prioritize (start with either the one that pays or the one that lifts the greatest burden), keep writing until it’s done, and repeat the process.

The real reason hiding underneath the immobilization though, is that for all the education in health and body/mind/spirit integration (did I mention I practiced and taught this for years as a massage therapist?), for all the inherent understanding of what a being needs for balance and well-being, the element of self-care that I lack is one that cannot be taught.

It’s not a question of what to do, it’s how to make it important to do those things for myself, how to make myself a priority, how to tend to myself as I would tend to a child in need of the safety and security I did not know.  It’s how to create and uphold the boundaries (I like Bindu’s word, “container”) and the rhythms of life (wake, eat, write, bathe, exercise, work, play, sleep) that were completely lacking when I raised myself the first time, simply because they are good for me and because with them, I flourish.

This, then, is the work beneath the work.  This challenge has become about much more than just coercing the words to flow from synapse to fingertips and rewarding the body for being the vehicle that allows it to happen. 

It is about taking the time - not finding it, not creating it, but taking it because it’s already there - to flourish.  About somehow transcending the notion that one’s own needs are inconvenient to others and should therefore be squelched or at least diminished (this was practically my mantra growing up).  To recognize that, until we take up our own space we cannot offer ourselves fully to any enterprise.
Speaking of which, time to get this body moving!  More tomorrow...

A Not-So-Yogic Episode

There is a very practical reason for writing at a set time of the day, and the earlier in the morning the better: other people.
Since I did not see the “write 800 words a day for 21 consecutive days” challenge coming at me (I learned of it the morning of the first day), I had precisely no time to prepare myself and gear up for a regimen that would accommodate writing time that’s held sacred.  For this reason, these first few days have been a bit slapdash on the writing front, and savasana has been virtually the last thing to happen each day (more later on the yoga challenge). 
This morning’s preferred writing time was taken over by following up to be sure the blogging situation is working, and to learn as much about twitter (also new to me as of two days ago) as I can. 
An appointment in the late morning kept me waiting for over an anxious hour when it might have been prudent to be at least writing on the laptop (or for crying out loud, I could have finished the fringy scarf hanging off my needles at the moment!)... but alas, I had not seen that far forward and brought nothing with which to entertain my creative self.
The afternoon brought a gentle work-out which I did in as yoga-esque manner as possible, all the while thinking that this time, tonight, I will be done with the writing before 8 pm and not be pushing myself into the wee hours again.  Having, two weeks ago, finally established a rhythm of regularity with decent sleeping and waking hours, being up late two nights in a row really throws a wrench in my rustworks!

At any rate, all but the most highly supervised forms of yoga are a risk for me at the moment.  I’m recuperating from a knee injury and have famously loose ligaments which are forever getting me into trouble in yoga classes - I have a tendency to accomplish positions that are way out of my league because I don’t have the strength to back them up.  John Friend once had me doing backbends on day one of classes I took with him - I’d never done one before in my life and had not practiced asanas for years, but inspired I became and over I went - and had to crumple myself down to the mat and curl into a ball in order to get out of it. 
So.... I’m going to get my asana in gear tomorrow and see what treasures the #215800 yoga video has in store.  I’m toying with the idea of a 5:45 class but (a) I’ve never met the instructor and don’t know if I want to risk entrusting my injuries to a stranger, and (b) if I’m up at that time maybe it would be best to use if for writing!
Because - ahh, yes- other people!
I’m socked away in the bedroom now, hunkered on the edge of the bed, trying to hammer out these words just because I said I would.  This is one of those writing times when it is just spent trying to get the exercise done already because the brilliance is not cooperating and the time is getting late and I want to be nuzzled up against my sweetie but I can’t because she’s got to deal with - oh yeah - other people!
Namely, the landlady.  She lives upstairs.  Last night when she said she’d come down some other time to have a look at our lights which have been flickering and shutting themselves down spontaneously, I marched up there and told her that ignored electricity issues can result in fires.  She reluctantly called the contractor who most recently handled wiring, and an electrician she knows.  They were supposed to be here at 6, which is right when we got home from the workout.  An hour later (at least we did not wait to eat dinner!) she texted my partner to say they’d be here tomorrow.  When she asked what time (the lady thinks that because we are self-employed we never leave the house!) she replied “don’t worry, I’ll use my key”.  Jenn texted back that we’d rather be here, and repeated the request for a notice about what time it would be.

So, some minutes pass and Jenn’s on the porch when her phone rings, so she asks me to pick it up.  Without even the decency of introduction, she says, “so why do you need to be there?”  At this point I’ve known nothing of their communication and have no idea what she is talking about, and I tell her so.  She gets me caught up and says, “So I want to know why you want to be there”.  I do my best to get into Jenn’s head, and choosing sentiments I know we share I said, “Probably because whenever a stranger comes into our home, we like to know about it”, to which she responds in a half-yell, “Well I’m the OWNER of the house and I would never bring anyone into it who...”.  At this point I suggest that, because she’s just begun yelling at someone who is new to the conversation and who is guessing in the first place, that it’s possible that her reaction is out of proportion to the actual event.

I then add that we would also want to keep track of our cat, make sure our space was ready for visitors, get our things out of the way, and most importantly we are best equipped to describe the situation.  I said that while it’s true she is the landlord, that tenants also have rights and that includes the right to be at home when strangers are brought into it.  I made a whole stunning string of arguments which unfortunately only reached my own and my lover’s ears... for the landlady had long since hung up.

One of my favorite yogic texts describes how a state of heightened emotional intensity can catapult the yogi into a state of union with the creative force of the universe- the very pulse of spanda.  Oh yeah- in order to attain that, the experient has to resist the tendency to spin off in a torrent of badmouthing and “for f***’s sake”ing and riding the adrenaline wave with such vehemence that when
she turns back
to the comical article she’d begun on the process of considering breast-reduction surgery,
she finds that she can only focus on the rant.  Oh yeah, the girlfriend’s ranting too.  Which is why I’m here, hunkered on the edge of the bed.  At over 1100 words at this point, and most of them crap.  But sometimes it just goes that way, and I have at least accomplished this:
Carved out the space and time no matter what, developed a fondness for writing early enough that nobody else can get into my stream, remembered at least for a moment one of my favorite yogic texts.  Savasana next. (Actually not, the landlady just turned up.  Whaddya know...)
Post-script:
Savasana along with YL's Acceptance oil goes a long way toward stabilizing the spinning vortex of churning mojo that occupies one's midrif after a shouting match with a person in the grips of a wildly irrational misperception. 

Grateful for a Life in Ruins

Day 2 for #215800.

Today I am overly tired from being up quite late for two nights in a row.
I had to be at work very early to plunge into a day so full of activity there’s been no down time for me to consider the thoughts in my own head. I have gone through the day in a sort of hazy daze- thinking, “what ever will I write about when it comes time for those 800 words?”

Still being under the impression that each day's writing is to be posted in blog format, it's a little daunting. So much of what wants to come out is deeply personal and involves people still living; it would be uncouth to publicize it without discernment and so I refrain for the time being.

It’s conceivable that listening to a Tom Robbins book on cd while driving home would have led me to wander off to create fantastical constructions of alternate or overlapping realities, or to drive myself to the limits of the most stunning array of linguistic gymnastics of which I am capable in my present state (his deftness and cunning in that arena are almost tangibly felt and I hold him in high regard for this capacity).

What triggered the switch on the  ol’ write-ometer, though, while it was inspired by the novel in question, has set me in a much more ponderous direction. To wit: 
A character is explaining to someone who has done her wrong that, without the disruption wrought by his wrongdoing, her life would never have taken the sudden and surprising turns (for which she ultimately is grateful) that it had.  Having spoken with other women who’d had the same experience, she concludes her narrative by saying, “we are so grateful to you for having ruined us”. 

The part of my mind that was just passively gliding along on the spoken words, being blithely entertained, suddenly stuck an elbow in the ribs of the part responsible for discerning cues from life from which to enrich or enliven writing.  (I’m always stymied by the axiom, “write what you know”, because I know such disparate things that I can rarely choose one thing on which to focus).

More than once in this life I’ve seen all the pillars of my existence come crashing down around me.  Each time I’ve dwelt in shame, rage, blame, guilt, desolation, remorse, and finally fortitude while searching out the cause for collapse and locating the tools for rebuilding. It is no news to most who would ever identify themselves as a seeker that seemingly bad or difficult circumstances ultimately serve us on our journey.  They are part of what ripens and seasons (and some would add, cooks) us, and they are vitally important to a genuine journey.

This expression of gratitude for having been ruined, though.  Look deeper.  The most devastating pillar from which I’ve ever been thrust was one I’d constructed myself, and I’d made it from some of the most valuable things in my possession: profound devotion, a keen intellect, a seeming ease of grasping rather obtuse principles and explaining them in accessible language, and a burning desire to put all of these into the service of mankind by expounding on them- after validating my right, privilege, and perceived duty to speak on such things by first obtaining an Ivy-League degree to prove I was worthy. Never mind that I was already in my 30’s and had no savings and therefore worked full-time while learning sanskrit and trying to remember enough math to do physics while home, relationships, and sanity unravelled under the weight of it all, and that the focus required to stay on the Dean’s list meant that other things became secondary (such as eating, sleeping, paying bills).  Not being on the Dean’s List was not an option; an as-yet unidentified component of the ptsd from my childhood was eventually revealed to be a paralyzing terror around achieving academic excellence.

When the strain became too much and the weak spots began to show in the seams of my world, I kept on because I believed it was my calling, and a higher calling at that. When it was finally suggested that a sabbatical might keep me alive until Spring I gave in to the impending collapse in a swoon of such desperate self-loathing that I was sure I’d never recover.  I’d flung myself into the mission of scholarship with the fervent belief that it was my sacred duty, and to have come away not only with the goal unattained but to also be a certifiable mess in the bargain, I felt was certain proof that my spiritual life was in ruins.  I’d allowed myself to be deluded into thinking I was worthy of such a task, and had been reduced to rubble in the bargain.  All thoughts of myself were disparaging and I stalwartly believed those views must be shared even by the most compassionate of beings, the spiritual head of my tradition, with whose blessings I’d begun the pursuit in the first place.

It has been eight years of rebuilding from the monumental “shattering of all my dreams”.
In that time I’ve gone from being a puddle of a wreck to a business owner and valued member of a rather progressive community.  I offer the work of my mind and hands to bettering and protecting the world each day, and I remember that the only “calling” that matters is the inner work we do day by day, in our own inner sanctum.

Recently, I recalled a certain moment early in my spiritual journey: I am on a shuttle bus taking me to a sacred meditation retreat site, one that has been home to a lineage of spiritual masters for decades.  It is my first time there, and I know it is an incredibly auspicious event.  I’ve been told that, in order to fully harness the power of the place and the practices, it is strongly recommended to set an intention for my time there.

It is one of those unspeakably holy moments, when the deepest, knowing  inner core of the seeker ignites in a flash with the untapped fearlessness, that reckless craving for the state that is beyond all other states and causes the sincerest of vows to spontaneously spill forth- “Whatever it takes, give me the humility to attain my true goal”. 

Ahhhh. 

“Whatever it takes” is apparently seeker-speak for, “Ruin me, and I will be most grateful”.

On Reclaiming Lapsed Practices

It's been a technological nightmare today.  After 4 attempts at making a website to host my writings for the #21 5 800 challenge, finally got this to stay put:
http://www.graciousenterprises.com/Blue_Circle_Press/index.html
This morning when I had my tea I did not have a twitter account.  It was something on my to do list.  But my partner discovered this challenge and offered it to me for motivation;  whether for the irony or because I can seriously use a rhythm change to get my writing groove on, it's been my day's work.
So the page is a mess and the settings, a travesty - but there are 800 words here, and that's what matters!


That my mind should find it’s deepest stillness (only, not in a good way) when called upon to describe myself while establishing my twitter profile, could be a telling enough signal that it needs no elaboration.  And yet, with a blank page and a vow that I’ll get 800 words on it by nightfall, why not plumb the depths of this one?

So- why the abyss?  The blank canvas of the “describe yourself” field is a beguiling and seductive phenomenon.  Who among us can pinpoint the complexity, the dichotomies, the contradictions-running-parallel that make up the “who” of who we are, in a tidy sum of a certain number of allowable characters?  And who can resist casting themselves in only the most appealing of roles; carefully choosing the most compelling of descriptions, trotting out our highest virtues as if they were up for auction (and if said virtues are musty and gritty from seasons of disuse, who’ll be the wiser?)?

Tempting though it was to describe myself as author, teacher, student, philosopher, sanskritist, urban farmer, sustainable lifestyles enthusiast and coach, natural health consultant focused on pure plant extracts (because the people likely to see the posts might find these aspects of my true identity to be appealing enough to allow me access to the “cool kid” club), and although at certain times each of these monikers rings true, there is also the dearly beloved dark side:

I haven’t written more than 300 words at a sitting in 2 weeks, and that was for a book review.  If I get paid for the time I spent writing it for the co-op where I work, then technically I will be an author.  Prior to that my greatest writing stint was a hurculean 400+ page compilation of musings which tied together  a single verse in a beloved sanskrit text with modern bodywork and psychoneuroimmunology through the human cerebrospinal fluid system - this was nearly eight years ago. In 2010, I started the new year with fanatical journaling, which began to take the form of nightly rants against the people and circumstances responsible for the post-traumatic stress which is the primary legacy of my childhood. The point here is that, while I conceive of myself as a writer and author, it is frequently hard to discern this from  my actual behaviour. 

The same rings true for all the things I’d love to identify with in a description of myself to strangers.  I’m self-employed in the natural health field, and have truly impressive implements at my disposal.  I claim to teach and support the people who come to learn from me, but lately the lack of structure that is both the bane and the blessing of the self-employed has left me in a state of near apathy about getting anything done - and then I get wrapped up in the glamorous, gooey guilt of it all and pledge to make a turn around. 

And what, oh what, about spiritual practices?  I’ve been so distant from my path and my master for so long that it didn’t even register to include “meditator” or “yogini” in my description of myself - though there was a time that all other identifications literally slid away.  It was 1997 or 1998, and I was in traffic in Seattle behind a car with a rainbow bumper sticker on it.  Having come out in red-neck Idaho during highschool in the 1980s and having spent a number of years as a queer rights activist, it was nearly instinct to honk and wave at such a sight (It was a lot newer then- hey, we didn’t even have the flag yet when I kissed my first girl) - but there was a part of me that suddenly switched off, and I was not identified by that anymore.  I suddenly did not identify as a lesbian, a massage therapist, a democrat, a Seattleite.  I was not a survivor, nor a person in recovery.  My sole and single identification was that of one who is one with that state in deepest meditation, that sense of belonging irrevocably to the source of grace; that state steeped in humility, gratitude, and reverence. 
And these days?  I sometimes feel bereft, like one mourning for the state that once came so naturally and simply, because I was steeped in regular practices.
And so today, this challenge has begun - and I am at 739 words this very moment and feel I’ve barely begun... talk about full circle, talk about irony...
I’m doing this challenge because my partner thought it would be a good idea.  I’m not even ready to think about why that is so very full circle, or why it is so ironic.  Maybe at some point, but not just yet. Nighty-night!

A Rather Flustery Day

This is my very first twitter-post.  I've spent the entire morning wrangling with technology rather than writing; and the ironic thing is, this is all done in an effort to join in with a group of people recommitting to their writing by pledging to write 800 words a day for 21 days (I don't know why the number of days was selected, but it was interesting to me because learning experts say that it takes 21 days of repeated action to learn or instill a new skill).  This was brought to my attention by my partner this morning and I decided to make the pledge- the caveat is that the writer needs a webpage in order to post.  My website is for business, so I set about creating a new one in order to participate in the project and so my morning has been spent as an IT person (NOT my forte!) rather than an author.
I don't think the words typed in in an effort to set up a username, buy a godaddy domain, or reclaim the first four blogs I created in iWeb (which evaporated, every one of them, shortly after confirming that they were published successfully) count in this effort.  I think at this point I have three more email accounts, a domain name, and up to seven blogs posted somewhere in cyber-ia that did not exist when I had my morning tea.  All of this is just to say, if I post this and later succeed in finding it, I'll count it a technological success.  I think I'll do my actual writing on the desktop though; I don't feel fully confident about the tech stuff involved!