As I've been getting quiet more and more each day with the mindfulness and the meditation and the staying, I find my mom fills my thoughts more. I'm thinking about how sad she is, how negative she feels about her life, how her pain affects her. I notice my urges to change these things for her, and also acknolwedge that I can't, and try to feel my way through to love for her. When I am quiet and totally in tune with what love feels like, I find that my desire to control or change her just feels like interference, so it's easy to identify. I don't know if I'll be able to maintain the distinction in her actual presence. That will be interesting to watch, to figure out if I can stay in love.
There are memories that are coming back, too. I fear all the time that my memories are gone from me almost as soon as I have them because that just seems to be how my brain works, but as I'm getting quieter some are coming back. This might suggest that the speed with which I live my life affects my ability to form good attachments and memories. I don't know yet.
But I was falling asleep the other night and a memory of my mother pulling her panty hose on came to me, me watching her in her bedroom and admiring the concavity of her belly, her telling me how she always sucked her stomach in because it kept those muscles strong. I sit up straighter just remembering it, before my normal slouch takes back over, a long-ingrained act of defiance. This thing with the belly is one of the few bits of womanly advice I remember her passing on to me; I don't remember talks about tampons or deodorants or desire. Mostly she just let me go and certainly I would have resisted anything she had to say anyway, so there we were, opposing forces pushing each other apart, even then.
I first grieve that she let me go so easily, and also think it has made me who I am, and am grateful.
I think of pictures of her, tall and thin, and the whispers in the family, jealous or true, that she didn't eat enough, was maybe anorexic.
That seems possible, or maybe she was very healthy and they weren't, and her not eating cream milkshakes and beef for every meal seemed aberrant to them. How dare she do things differently. Who does she think she is. I think it makes sense that my mom would tightly control her eating the way she tightly controlled her environment because of the way her growing up must have seemed so out of control, the way she was left with strangers when she was just five while my grandmother did I don't know what. The move from New York to Idaho when my grandmother picked her back up one day. The marriage to my gruff and difficult German step-grandfather. The sometimes-insanity of my grandmother, who required her own set of strictures be followed after-the-chaos of the early years.
I think it makes sense that I would do some of the same things, that I am a controller, too.
I cry on and off throughout the days, at odd times, for and about my mother, and for myself, who also lost a mother for a little while at a young age, though I don't remember it, and who feels as if I have lost her again to her illness. I try not to wipe the tears away so fast but to feel them, let them soak in a little, so that I can know I will survive them just fine and that they might have something to teach me. I try not to bolt from them. I remember too, that I am not that little girl anymore, and that my mother is not lost, but changed, as all things change.
I'm not sure why, but making space for the quiet has opened these things up for me, and brought me back to myself also. There is the not distancing myself from the pain, forcing myself to inhabit my body. I could maybe call this God's grace? It's not easy to decide to slow down, to fully experience the boredom, the sadness, the isolation, the loneliness. And then, it's the easiest thing in the world once you decide to do it, and notice what it brings you. The other--the dulling and bolting--is much worse, much more deadening.
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Not Doing Anxiety
I woke up Wednesday morning already anxious, but there wasn't anything external forcing it (I guess, is there ever? I don't know about you, but my anxiety lives in my own head, for the most part). This was perplexing. I couldn't identify any cause for it, a powerless feeling, because if you don't know why you feel bad, you can't do anything about it, right? Used to be I would cast about for something external to help explain the anxiety, too, which had to perplex and annoy the people around me pretty good. "It can't be me," my subconscious must have been saying. "It must be all those socks strewn about all over the house!"
Then I had this realization that the feeling I was having was an old anxiety, or rather a residual anxiety. Maybe even a memory of anxiety. An anxiety habit.
Here is what it felt like: when I was a kid, maybe ten, maybe thirteen, I don't know, I would wake up in the middle of the night, look at the clock, and in sleeping-walking-type fashion, I would get ready for school in a huge rush. It could be 3 in the morning, and my brain would see the clock, think it was 3pm, and figure that I was late, late, late. I'd get dressed, brush my teeth, and be in the process of curling my hair (yes, I was curling my hair in third grade) before I'd realize that it was dark outside and the house was too eerily quiet for it to really be morning. Then I'd curse and go back to bed, knowing I'd have to get up in a few hours and get ready all over again. This happened several times. One time involved spooning a lot of mayonnaise into my mouth in the middle of the night. Ew.
It's symbolic of the kinds of anxiety I felt most deeply as a kid. Anxiety that I would be late; that I would be unprepared; that I wouldn't know something; that I would screw something up and be found out.
Still deal with most of those on a very basic, reflexive level, though I'd like to believe I've made some progress in a few of these areas. I'm a little less of a know-it-all than I used to be, I hope, because I don't need quite so badly to be seen as smart or prepared. I'm late now and then and it doesn't freak me out as much as it used to. I listen a lot more to how I feel and what I want to do, rather than what I feel I have to do. I screw up a lot and am able to laugh about it. Not always, but sometimes. That is progress, and my life keeps getting better and better as a result.
Tuesday morning I was supposed to have my annual performance review. I realized right at the meeting time that I had forgotten the appointment and was home stuffing a muffin in my mouth and had just prepared a cup of coffee. I literally threw the muffin aside (lucky Milo) and screamed out the door and onto the snowy roads. My boss was incredibly understanding as I called her on my way to the office and told me to take my time. It ended up being a good meeting, and I didn't get too into a tizzy over it. Even though, Jesus, I was just freaking LATE for my annual performance review. How lame can you get. Plus I had to ask for a raise. Awesome. It all worked out fine, though.
But then I woke up the next morning with the ill-defined anxiety. The old anxiety.
Hmmm. Interesting, that is.
This is what meditation does for me. It helps me to see the anxiety as the not-me. It helps me to not follow it to some sort of logical conclusion. It helps me to realize there is nothing I need to "do" to alleviate it. It allays my need to stuff down the pain of the anxiety with my other old habits.
It's not just a coping mechanism, though. It's a realization that, fundamentally, there is some "me" that is not beholden to satisfying or allaying my anxieties. I do it because it feels good, so much better than anything I could do to try to deal with my anxiety otherwise. It makes life easier, and happier, and everything good that you can think of. All just from breathing with some bells.
Then I had this realization that the feeling I was having was an old anxiety, or rather a residual anxiety. Maybe even a memory of anxiety. An anxiety habit.
Here is what it felt like: when I was a kid, maybe ten, maybe thirteen, I don't know, I would wake up in the middle of the night, look at the clock, and in sleeping-walking-type fashion, I would get ready for school in a huge rush. It could be 3 in the morning, and my brain would see the clock, think it was 3pm, and figure that I was late, late, late. I'd get dressed, brush my teeth, and be in the process of curling my hair (yes, I was curling my hair in third grade) before I'd realize that it was dark outside and the house was too eerily quiet for it to really be morning. Then I'd curse and go back to bed, knowing I'd have to get up in a few hours and get ready all over again. This happened several times. One time involved spooning a lot of mayonnaise into my mouth in the middle of the night. Ew.
It's symbolic of the kinds of anxiety I felt most deeply as a kid. Anxiety that I would be late; that I would be unprepared; that I wouldn't know something; that I would screw something up and be found out.
Still deal with most of those on a very basic, reflexive level, though I'd like to believe I've made some progress in a few of these areas. I'm a little less of a know-it-all than I used to be, I hope, because I don't need quite so badly to be seen as smart or prepared. I'm late now and then and it doesn't freak me out as much as it used to. I listen a lot more to how I feel and what I want to do, rather than what I feel I have to do. I screw up a lot and am able to laugh about it. Not always, but sometimes. That is progress, and my life keeps getting better and better as a result.
Tuesday morning I was supposed to have my annual performance review. I realized right at the meeting time that I had forgotten the appointment and was home stuffing a muffin in my mouth and had just prepared a cup of coffee. I literally threw the muffin aside (lucky Milo) and screamed out the door and onto the snowy roads. My boss was incredibly understanding as I called her on my way to the office and told me to take my time. It ended up being a good meeting, and I didn't get too into a tizzy over it. Even though, Jesus, I was just freaking LATE for my annual performance review. How lame can you get. Plus I had to ask for a raise. Awesome. It all worked out fine, though.
But then I woke up the next morning with the ill-defined anxiety. The old anxiety.
Hmmm. Interesting, that is.
This is what meditation does for me. It helps me to see the anxiety as the not-me. It helps me to not follow it to some sort of logical conclusion. It helps me to realize there is nothing I need to "do" to alleviate it. It allays my need to stuff down the pain of the anxiety with my other old habits.
It's not just a coping mechanism, though. It's a realization that, fundamentally, there is some "me" that is not beholden to satisfying or allaying my anxieties. I do it because it feels good, so much better than anything I could do to try to deal with my anxiety otherwise. It makes life easier, and happier, and everything good that you can think of. All just from breathing with some bells.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Practical Meditation
You all know that I've been interested in meditation for a long time, and have had some interesting experiences meditating (like that time when my limbs got all expansive and universal-like. That was better than shrooms. Not that I know what shrooms are like, dear tenure committee members and law-enforcing-type officials and taxpayers and older family members reading this blog).
But, frankly, I've not ever been able to keep up meditation as a daily practice. Certainly, I have done things that approximated it: daily spiritual reading, some chanting here and there. And I think running can be pretty meditative. Still, there has been no daily sitting down and quieting of the mind, even though I've needed it. Oh, I'd try. I'd sit for a few minutes and then feel really, really called to pop a load of laundry in the washer. Or I'd get all anxious and need to do some online shopping. So it seemed sort of counter-productive all in all. I didn't know for how long to sit or why or anything like that. It just was too hard to make it a daily practice.
Then, when I had my mini-meltdown in San Diego (which maybe was not so mini. Maybe more of the life-changing variety) I had that phone conversation with N., which she probably thought was kind of inconsequential but was actually really, really important (she's always doing that to/for me, as best friends do) and she asked if I could go meditate to get a handle on the freak-out. I think I tearfully responded uh-huh, but the answer really should have been nuh-uh, because I wouldn't have known how and it probably would have freaked me out even more to try in that moment.
There isn't really a knowing how to meditate, you say. You just get quiet and let the thoughts go by.
Yes.
But I need more help than that. I'm a first-world bozo. You'll see.
Anyway, N.'s question rang in my head for a while, and I wondered if one of the things I really needed to figure out how to do was to sit and be quiet with myself for a while and quit running away so much.
Happily, this budding awareness of my need to start meditating coincided with my getting this Christmas present from my grandma:
That, in case you don't know, is a Kindle Fire. Or a Kindle Fire in its little cover, at least. Ruby saw a commercial for it a few weeks before Christmas and asked me if I wanted one for the family and I said yes and she sent me the money for it and then it became mine because it's the best present I've ever had and I love it and use it all the time and I don't want anyone else to have it because it has changed my life.
I'm selfish that way.
Don't tell Grandma.
So, the Fire is awesome for so many reasons. It can pay music from Amazon's cloud, where we have uploaded more than 5,000 songs from our collection. It can play movies and t.v. shows streaming from Amazon's excellent collection, which fills in holes Netflix has. I'm watching The Tudors at the moment, which is like porn, set in the 16th century. All those loose and flowy nightgowns. Totally awesome.
The Fire can play stuff from Netflix, it can access email if you like, it's got all the Droid apps. It directly connects to your Amazon account, and I know this makes me a corporate shill. So be it. It has all of my books and magazines. I can catch up on all my blogs via google reader. It's friendly and sweet and unassuming and easy to use it and I love it. It was only $200, too. Jesus. That's less than a coat from Boden.
But my favorite thing is the Insight Meditation Center app:
It allows you to design preset meditation times. It has specialized gongs to remind you to return to your breath, and different gongs to let you know you're done. It even shows you who else is meditating around the world when you are.
All the wind up for that. A lame plug for an app. Sorry. You're terribly underwhelmed, I can tell. But I'm overwhelmed, because this thing has me meditating every day, and it's so easy and delightful. It's my wee technological meditation crutch, but it's profoundly good medicine.
This post is already too long, so I'll talk about the benefits I'm seeing from the actual meditation later, and why maybe this time is different from the other times I got all worked up about meditation. But if you've thought about meditating, would like to try it...I don't know. There's an app for that.
Ew. Sorry. Had to do it.
But, frankly, I've not ever been able to keep up meditation as a daily practice. Certainly, I have done things that approximated it: daily spiritual reading, some chanting here and there. And I think running can be pretty meditative. Still, there has been no daily sitting down and quieting of the mind, even though I've needed it. Oh, I'd try. I'd sit for a few minutes and then feel really, really called to pop a load of laundry in the washer. Or I'd get all anxious and need to do some online shopping. So it seemed sort of counter-productive all in all. I didn't know for how long to sit or why or anything like that. It just was too hard to make it a daily practice.
Then, when I had my mini-meltdown in San Diego (which maybe was not so mini. Maybe more of the life-changing variety) I had that phone conversation with N., which she probably thought was kind of inconsequential but was actually really, really important (she's always doing that to/for me, as best friends do) and she asked if I could go meditate to get a handle on the freak-out. I think I tearfully responded uh-huh, but the answer really should have been nuh-uh, because I wouldn't have known how and it probably would have freaked me out even more to try in that moment.
There isn't really a knowing how to meditate, you say. You just get quiet and let the thoughts go by.
Yes.
But I need more help than that. I'm a first-world bozo. You'll see.
Anyway, N.'s question rang in my head for a while, and I wondered if one of the things I really needed to figure out how to do was to sit and be quiet with myself for a while and quit running away so much.
Happily, this budding awareness of my need to start meditating coincided with my getting this Christmas present from my grandma:
That, in case you don't know, is a Kindle Fire. Or a Kindle Fire in its little cover, at least. Ruby saw a commercial for it a few weeks before Christmas and asked me if I wanted one for the family and I said yes and she sent me the money for it and then it became mine because it's the best present I've ever had and I love it and use it all the time and I don't want anyone else to have it because it has changed my life.
I'm selfish that way.
Don't tell Grandma.
So, the Fire is awesome for so many reasons. It can pay music from Amazon's cloud, where we have uploaded more than 5,000 songs from our collection. It can play movies and t.v. shows streaming from Amazon's excellent collection, which fills in holes Netflix has. I'm watching The Tudors at the moment, which is like porn, set in the 16th century. All those loose and flowy nightgowns. Totally awesome.
The Fire can play stuff from Netflix, it can access email if you like, it's got all the Droid apps. It directly connects to your Amazon account, and I know this makes me a corporate shill. So be it. It has all of my books and magazines. I can catch up on all my blogs via google reader. It's friendly and sweet and unassuming and easy to use it and I love it. It was only $200, too. Jesus. That's less than a coat from Boden.
But my favorite thing is the Insight Meditation Center app:
It allows you to design preset meditation times. It has specialized gongs to remind you to return to your breath, and different gongs to let you know you're done. It even shows you who else is meditating around the world when you are.
All the wind up for that. A lame plug for an app. Sorry. You're terribly underwhelmed, I can tell. But I'm overwhelmed, because this thing has me meditating every day, and it's so easy and delightful. It's my wee technological meditation crutch, but it's profoundly good medicine.
This post is already too long, so I'll talk about the benefits I'm seeing from the actual meditation later, and why maybe this time is different from the other times I got all worked up about meditation. But if you've thought about meditating, would like to try it...I don't know. There's an app for that.
Ew. Sorry. Had to do it.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
A Longish Post on Dropping In
Man, the times have been interesting lately.
I mean, there's all the outer stuff: the debt ceiling debate, in which the poor are completely erased from the discussion except as a means of extracting more and more from those who have less. There are the heat waves, discussions of Denver being the new Phoenix. There is football, which apparently is going to happen this year, thank God for E.
But also, interesting times on the inside. If I see you in person at all, I've probably unloaded on you in the first five minutes that I'm experiencing some sort of Total Hormonal Realness that I don't understand. It started earlier in the summer with some fun unexplained weight gain, nighttime hot flashes, and huge clumps of hair falling out, then marched on through the exciting terrain that is horrific chin acne, getting my period every two to three weeks, emotional loop-di-loops, and a libido that would make Larry Flynt blush.
Sorry, people. Just keeping it real.
I'm going to a new gyno tomorrow to have things measured and poked and prodded just to make sure this isn't some thyroid thing, or some sort of growthishness messing things up. I'm guessing it's not. All of those symptoms above have mellowed considerably in the last week. I'm guessing I'm flirting a little bit with peri-menopause, even though I'm kind of young for that. It does raise some interesting questions about what to do. I like being off the pill. Been off for a year now. But I'm not a fan of these new symptoms. So how to proceed is interesting.
One of the more annoying symptoms I'm having is a return to pregnancy brain, where all I'm really capable of intellectually is looking at the new Company Store catalog and watching Sex and the City reruns on VH-1. I'm doing my reading and writing for work, but it's slogging, painful, torture. My brain really just wants to waterski on the surface of life right now. It's not interested in scuba.
So I decided to go see Kate, my amazing tuning-fork-healing-touch-goddess, for my usual tune-up, and she did some sort of spiritual-endocrine flush on Monday, which gave me a very interesting set of cramps afterwards. I complained to her beforehand of feeling completely scattered, unable to focus. Delaminated. No actual laying on of hands of fluid manipulation occurred--this is all above-the-pants-type stuff. But whereas during my last session with her I "dropped out" into some other plane and listened to some beings having conversations around me, like I was a kid in some sort of cosmic beauty shop (interesting), this time, it took me forever to give myself over to the treatment. Monkey brain kept wanting to think about the new fall line at Boden (cute cord dresses) and about why Khloe Kardashian isn't getting pregnant.
But then, I became pancake batter. I don't know how else to describe it. One minute, I was getting angry at myself for not focusing on the treatment, and the next minute, it was like I had turned viscous and was being poured through a funnel onto a flat surface, where I just pancaked out. Everything mellowed, and then I noticed a pulsing ache in the ovary area. I became aware of having suppressed the ache for a long time. Kate wondered later if it has to do with some old injury I sustained. I don't know. Maybe around the girls' births?
Probably just my mind playing tricks. We'll see what the doc says tomorrow.
Except then this other weird thing happened. My friend Nancy responded a few weeks back to my sad Bogota post, emailing me something like, "you do have community, and I'm dropping off Krishna Das's book to you right now." And then she appeared with it, we had lunch, and she took me to church the next Sunday. She's something of a big-time blessing in my life.
Anyway, in case you don't know, Krishna Das is a formerly-Jewish guy who went to India and studied with a guru and now leads awesome chants here in the US. Nancy and I went and saw him a few weeks back (also her idea and her treat).
So I was chanting along to his cd this morning, which I've never done before even though I've had the cd for about a year and really love it. I usually just do yoga to it. The problem this morning was I felt like meditating but had antsy pregnancy brain and thought I'd try the chanting to see if that helped. Here's the song I did:
He's also a major blessing. And his book is very, very interesting.
Anyway, so I'm chanting, and I just drop in right away. This happens to me some times when I meditate. I'll meditate for a cumulative hours and hours with nothing, only struggle to stay in, and then POP, I'll drop in and be totally connected and get interesting messages and sensations and things. Then it won't happen again for a few years. Maybe if I meditated more regularly I'd drop in more regularly but that's for another post.
My point is that I dropped in this morning and my body started doing all this crazy gumby stuff. Like my limbs got all big then very, very tiny. My feet would seem to be right in front of my mouth and then would move miles away. I was elastigirl, or a Botero figure, or the Michelin man. I was all of those things. And it was totally effortless and refreshing and godly.
So, that's what's going on with me. Summertime, getting ready back to go back to school, running 25 miles a week, and dropping in to gumby-universe-land now and then.
Interesting times.
I mean, there's all the outer stuff: the debt ceiling debate, in which the poor are completely erased from the discussion except as a means of extracting more and more from those who have less. There are the heat waves, discussions of Denver being the new Phoenix. There is football, which apparently is going to happen this year, thank God for E.
But also, interesting times on the inside. If I see you in person at all, I've probably unloaded on you in the first five minutes that I'm experiencing some sort of Total Hormonal Realness that I don't understand. It started earlier in the summer with some fun unexplained weight gain, nighttime hot flashes, and huge clumps of hair falling out, then marched on through the exciting terrain that is horrific chin acne, getting my period every two to three weeks, emotional loop-di-loops, and a libido that would make Larry Flynt blush.
Sorry, people. Just keeping it real.
I'm going to a new gyno tomorrow to have things measured and poked and prodded just to make sure this isn't some thyroid thing, or some sort of growthishness messing things up. I'm guessing it's not. All of those symptoms above have mellowed considerably in the last week. I'm guessing I'm flirting a little bit with peri-menopause, even though I'm kind of young for that. It does raise some interesting questions about what to do. I like being off the pill. Been off for a year now. But I'm not a fan of these new symptoms. So how to proceed is interesting.
One of the more annoying symptoms I'm having is a return to pregnancy brain, where all I'm really capable of intellectually is looking at the new Company Store catalog and watching Sex and the City reruns on VH-1. I'm doing my reading and writing for work, but it's slogging, painful, torture. My brain really just wants to waterski on the surface of life right now. It's not interested in scuba.
So I decided to go see Kate, my amazing tuning-fork-healing-touch-goddess, for my usual tune-up, and she did some sort of spiritual-endocrine flush on Monday, which gave me a very interesting set of cramps afterwards. I complained to her beforehand of feeling completely scattered, unable to focus. Delaminated. No actual laying on of hands of fluid manipulation occurred--this is all above-the-pants-type stuff. But whereas during my last session with her I "dropped out" into some other plane and listened to some beings having conversations around me, like I was a kid in some sort of cosmic beauty shop (interesting), this time, it took me forever to give myself over to the treatment. Monkey brain kept wanting to think about the new fall line at Boden (cute cord dresses) and about why Khloe Kardashian isn't getting pregnant.
But then, I became pancake batter. I don't know how else to describe it. One minute, I was getting angry at myself for not focusing on the treatment, and the next minute, it was like I had turned viscous and was being poured through a funnel onto a flat surface, where I just pancaked out. Everything mellowed, and then I noticed a pulsing ache in the ovary area. I became aware of having suppressed the ache for a long time. Kate wondered later if it has to do with some old injury I sustained. I don't know. Maybe around the girls' births?
Probably just my mind playing tricks. We'll see what the doc says tomorrow.
Except then this other weird thing happened. My friend Nancy responded a few weeks back to my sad Bogota post, emailing me something like, "you do have community, and I'm dropping off Krishna Das's book to you right now." And then she appeared with it, we had lunch, and she took me to church the next Sunday. She's something of a big-time blessing in my life.
Anyway, in case you don't know, Krishna Das is a formerly-Jewish guy who went to India and studied with a guru and now leads awesome chants here in the US. Nancy and I went and saw him a few weeks back (also her idea and her treat).
So I was chanting along to his cd this morning, which I've never done before even though I've had the cd for about a year and really love it. I usually just do yoga to it. The problem this morning was I felt like meditating but had antsy pregnancy brain and thought I'd try the chanting to see if that helped. Here's the song I did:
He's also a major blessing. And his book is very, very interesting.
Anyway, so I'm chanting, and I just drop in right away. This happens to me some times when I meditate. I'll meditate for a cumulative hours and hours with nothing, only struggle to stay in, and then POP, I'll drop in and be totally connected and get interesting messages and sensations and things. Then it won't happen again for a few years. Maybe if I meditated more regularly I'd drop in more regularly but that's for another post.
My point is that I dropped in this morning and my body started doing all this crazy gumby stuff. Like my limbs got all big then very, very tiny. My feet would seem to be right in front of my mouth and then would move miles away. I was elastigirl, or a Botero figure, or the Michelin man. I was all of those things. And it was totally effortless and refreshing and godly.
So, that's what's going on with me. Summertime, getting ready back to go back to school, running 25 miles a week, and dropping in to gumby-universe-land now and then.
Interesting times.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Back to Practice
M. mentioned the other night that she had bought a book on meditation, and was going to give that a try, and I thought to myself, oh, yeah, meditation, I haven't been doing that. And then when I went to my tuning-forks healer (yes, that's what I said. What?) this week, she mentioned I should probably get back to meditation.
Okay, so I'm getting some messages that I should meditate. But the dog has to be walked, and classes prepped, and emails answered.
Then I noticed that I've been in ego-overdrive, which for me looks like me getting really internally worked up over things I care about: whether or not that journal article is going to get accepted (Why I haven't I heard? What is taking so long? What if I don't get published? What will people in my field think? How will I explain my failure?) or why some students in my Communicating Science class aren't taking their blog assignment seriously (Do they think I'll give them an easy A anyway? Have I messed up the structure of this class? Do we need a different textbook? What if they don't like me?).
On and on. And as the mind goes round, so does my stomach, and I get little spikes of anxiety, little spurts of adrenaline throughout the day, and end up feeling weary and exhausted and strung out.
So back to meditation I go. This is what works for me when I can't seem to quiet my mind:
I just sit somewhere comfortable. Because of my back, the traditional meditation pose doesn't always work for me (it does after yoga, but that's about it). I like sitting in my bed, or slightly leaning back on a bean bag. I put my hands on my knees with my thumb and forefinger touching. This "mudra" reminds my body of what it's supposed to do, and a little body memory is helpful when your mind is spinning a lot. Then, quite simply, I count to ten, timing the counting with my breath. I try to notice when I'm rushing the counting, my need to "get it done" overwhelming the breath. Often, I don't get past 3 before I go chasing some thought (this morning, I was chasing writing this blog post). But, eventually, if I persist, I can get to 10, and then start over. And before I know it, the thoughts are mellowing and I can let them go, not chasing them too much. They still come but I don't have to necessarily ride them into the sunset.
The counting is not the only way to go, obviously, and if I get back into my practice, my need to count, even, eventually fades and I can just go into quiet. But it's helpful when I'm out of practice and my mind seems to big for me to manage.
Above all, with the return to practice, I am returned to myself and can notice my ego-overdrive and it lessens its hold on me a little. So, here we go again.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Silly Mind Cage Monkey Doo
I'm sorry about the length of this post. But you can be glad, at least, that it's not a book-length reflection on my battle with my hair. Long-time readers, you know what I'm talking about. I won't even link to the old blog and that awesome picture of me as Christy Turlington.
These thoughts have been rolling around in my noggin for a few days, so I'm just going to air them out, unfiltered, and see what happens (and yes, that is what I always do. Shut it).
I've been on this spiritual path, yeah? And one of the things that keeps coming up is that I've really been wanting more freedom. I haven't exactly known what I've meant by this, but it's manifested as wanting to say no to more obligations; as putting relaxation and fun on my "to do" lists; as seeking out joy and adventure; and so on. I'm so sorry you've had to accompany me on my writhings through the mud of my longings like this. But stick with me on this particular slog. It might be worth it.
All of those external changes have been excellent. Totally necessary. Eye-opening. I'm glad I've done them, and I'm proud that I have some new, good habits that are about taking care of myself and building the life that I want: Nia, yoga, saying no to projects I don't want to do at work, reading, making time for myself, etc.
But there's been this nagging thing, you see? Where I still don't feel free? Where I still feel obligated, or like my life is not always my own? I've had some ideal days, as you know. Those days usually involve a leisurely waking up and then puttering around the house doing whatever strikes my fancy, staring out the window, the whole follow-your-bliss thing. I love those days. Probably always will.
But most days just aren't like that, and probably won't be for a long time. There's little things like dentist appointments and school registrations and going grocery shopping that just have to be done. There's big things like raising children and having a career and nurturing your marriage that just have to be done.
But I have had a smidgen of resentment about all this because it was keeping me from my freedom, dammit, which I wanted more than anything.
Okay. Maybe more than a smidgen.
So here's the big-time realization that has come to me this week. And yes, it's totally obvious. This is another late-bloomer moment. Prepare to be underwhelmed.
What I wanted freedom from...ta-da...is my brain.
Yep, my brain. The thing is, there will always be things on the to-do list (whether there is a physical list eventually or not). There will always be acts of service and obligation and whatever. The odd thing is that I don't actually mind doing all of that. In fact, I get tons of joy, happiness, and fulfillment from loving my husband and taking care of my kids and even, sometimes, cleaning the house. I don't even mind cleaning the litter box that much, when it comes down to it. Even grading papers is okay once I get into it (and to any students who are reading this, I don't mean to compare your work to cat poop. Really, I don't).
What I hate, though--what I really can't stand--is the thinking about what I have to do. I hate looking at the list in the morning, or reviewing my calendar, and getting that little pit of anxiety and resistance in my stomach, and all the rapid-fire, nearly sub-conscious self-talk that happens around all of it. That is the real pain in the ass. That is the real prison. And that real prison is me. It's my brain.
So how, exactly, did I figure this entirely obvious, self-evident thing out? Well, we're required in this church class I'm taking to meditate. Not required as in they hold a gun to our heads while we breathe deep, but they certainly ask us to make a commitment to particular spiritual practices, you know, as a means of facilitating our growth, and so I'm trying to show up to that commitment and see what happens.
I've meditated before, sure. In church, and sometimes at home. But I haven't been quite committed to it, primarily because it was time-instensive and anxiety-producing. Or so I used to think. See, I'd sit down to meditate, and get a few seconds of quiet in, and them my naughty monkey brain would go absolutely nuts with all the things I needed to be doing and with the anxiety of what I was not doing and how long the meditation was taking. I'd get up to get some of those things done so that I wouldn't feel so anxious, figuring I'd return to meditation when I was feeling calmer and could do a better job of it. Then I'd never come back to it, of course. Because there were always things to do.
HA! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, though. That's what I thought.
So now that I'm required by this class to do the meditation, and I'm being supported by lots of things to try it, I'm doing 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night. Oh, my monkey brain is still in there, throwing all sorts of shit at the bars of my braincage. In fact, I wrote half this post during last night's meditation session, before gently bringing myself back to the breath. I guess the shift is that I'm not giving up or going off to do things when this happens. I'm just shrugging my shoulders at my overactive mind and getting right back into it.
But the amazing thing is that I'm sticking with it and--Lord have mercy--I am experiencing the freedom I've been wanting all along. Freedom, peace. Peace, freedom. It's not about having a clear day to do whatever I want. It's not about dissatisfaction with my job, or the state of my toilets, or how well my children are behaving. It's about quieting my brain for 30 freaking minutes a day. Or at least trying to.
How about that. Now I see why the Buddhster is always laughing.
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