God bless the subconscious mind! There I was, sitting happily away trying not to think about how tired I am (really need some quality time in bed this weekend) when I jerked upright with a cry of "oh my god" as though somebody had connected me to the electric mains. I have an appointment downtown, and just enough time to shower before going.
Ah well, it was a good seven minutes' sit. I'll try to sit a second time this evening, although I expect that I will (again) be too tired.
Just goes to show that meditation is not escaping but indeed 'plugging in' to the here and now, doesn't it? Hope you made your appointment Udge, and that you get to catch up on sleep soon.
Yesterday, having slept badly, I clung to my bed until the last possible minute and left for work without sitting - the first time in ages. I felt a bit 'wrong' all day, only managed to sit late at night before going to sleep, managed to get up in time to sit this morning, though still sleeping badly and over-tired. Felt much better afterwards. I think I'm starting to need it like drinking water.
Love to everyone. I now end every meditation with 5 minutes of loving kindness, starting with this group and moving outwards. It's nice.
I've finally got back on the rickshaw thismorning. Everything seems to be going wrong for us, we have been towed off the motorway three times in 2 weeks. The breakages (inc gaggia coffe machine) have cost about 3600 euros so far. Yesterday, having only just got the car back I had a tyre burst on the motorway and had to stand in the freezing rain for an hour before the assitance got to me. A run of bad luck not just of three but of nine so far and counting...
the thing is I am finding myself much more able to deal with the shocks and yesterday after the initial panic and fear I actually managed to laugh about it. J however is taking each knock harder than the last (glad to hear your understanding of that one barbara!) and I am finding that reallyy really hard and painful. I was sitting in my meditation today with the image of reeds and brittle sticks and I suddenly saw that if I were a truly accepting and present reed I would accept j's brittle state at the moment rather than judge it as 'undesirable' just like I accept the car problems, so therefore the reed has a ways still to go to be truly reedlike. So perhaps this is the lesson here for me.
By the way today is the first anniversary of J's amazing shifting light site. Anyone passing by writing a little birthday message would be welcome.
Ruth, big warm hugs to you and J. It is absolutely vital that he keeps his site going until I sell my flat and am able to buy a painting. I think the lesson you describe is one of the hardest of all, and correspondingly worthwhile.
Hi everyone I have taken myself by the metaphorical scruff of the neck and given myself a metaphorical but compassionate shaking this morning. My lack of structure is just not good for me.
Therefore I am refreshing my commmitment inthe period I am not working to 2 x 20 minute chanting sessions (morning and evening) to be followed immediately by 5-10 minutes silent meditation. I'm not working now, I can do it. Like Nike says: just do it.
Udge: :-) and thanks for taking the time to post the date in spite of your rush.
Udge, I hope you made your appointment. Jean, I hope you catch up on sleep soon. And Ruth, MAJOR hugs for the major car troubles you've had: how terribly frustrating!
I ended up not sitting yesterday, although I did take an afternoon NAP which I'm hoping will bring me back to "almost normal" on the jet-lag/sleep deprivation front.
This morning, I sat 20 minutes first thing: back in the saddle again!
Hi Everybody ...actually managed to meditate (for some reason I can't call it 'sitting') for ten whole minutes at 5.45am this morning: instead of clinging grimly to those last shreds of sleep I let them go and got on with it. Feeling more in touch with myself just now and consequently aware of a well of deep distress. Ach - is it the time of year or the full moon or what ..so many folk are struggling right now.
Ruth I really recognise your description of judging emotions as desirable or undesirable and am conscious of how much harm and struggle it causes me (never mind the unfortunate recipient of my judgement!!)...
All - it's so good to know that everyone is plugging away getting on with it in one form or another ...I've wanted to 'talk' a bit more about my practice and how I feel about it as well as say a bit about TM ...but a lot of stuff has descended so it will have to wait. Hugs to everyone (including the silent ones ...)
Greetings Dear Friends: What an excellent idea for a blog :) On the path. every moment, every action is a meditation. Thus, may I commend to you my book Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel, a mystical adventure tale on the Sufi path of Love. You can view the book and read an excerpt at http://www.masterofthejinn.com
Ruth: what Jean said. More hugs and love to you as you deal with this incredibly frustrating string of bad luck.
I'm not sleeping well either, which is just about the worst thing for my mood and ability to cope calmly. I'm trying to hang in there, like everyone else, and to keep up the meditation even in short periods. Like Ruth and unlike some of you, I have to fit my life around another person's, so my time is not always my own to plan, and plans often have to be changed. This is both a joy and a difficulty - and another thing to work on accepting and handling with equanimity. Mostly, though, my life is just very busy and stressful right now, and here in northern North America the weather is really awful. We ALL have trouble here this time of year!
Sat this morning for a few minutes, until my bladder insisted I get out of bed. Foul-tempered and resentful today. Had to be sure to be here at 9:00 for a meeting that had no purpose whatsoever, but which lasted nearly till ten, including a little homily by my boss about how we live in a culture of entitlement, and how much better everything would be if teachers could still hit kids like in the good old days.
So I needed to be here by nine, and I dawdled on the net, loathing myself, until eight, which gave me fifteen minutes to shower and bolt into the car. Except that I had no clean laundry. So I threw in a load of whites (so at least I'll have something tomorrow), went up to take a shower (a meager one; the hot water was all being consumed by the washer), and then drove to work without benefit of breakfast, coffee, or underwear. I do have a clean shirt, though, because some mail-order ones arrived last night. I smell of sizing, or whatever it is that gives new fabric that stiffness and faint chlorine smell.
Tempted to just walk out of work here and never come back; a little curious as to how long it would take them to get around to firing me. Weeks, I expect. At eleven I sloped off to get a foul breakfast at the local pancake shop, a mass of eggs (in Beaverton they are under the impression that if you scramble eggs and then leave them sitting still in the pan until they form a bonded brown-bottomed mass you have made an "omelet") larded with various agglomerations of nitrates in assorted brownish-red colors that were supposed, I think, to represent different meats traditionally consumed by my tribe. Coffee in a big thermos, which kept it at an even temperature (lukewarm) all through my meal. Why do I inflict this sort of food on myself, I wonder?
Loving-kindness is a state of mind that feels so alien to me today that I can't even picture it. My imagination is completely cut off from it. Interesting to watch how being angry makes that utterly inaccessible to me. Not just that I can't feel it -- I really can't conceive of it, can't imagine what it is that Jean was doing this morning.
May all beings be without mornings like this :-) I can generate that aspiration, at least.
ohmigod, Dale, blessing, love and hugs to you -- and a better morning tomorrow. I wish I could materialize in your kitchen and cook you breakfast myself!
Oh Dale, I was in a foul mood this evening until you made me laugh so much - very far from this morning's loving kindness. Oh dear. I do sympathise. I have a lot of mornings like that. Meditation has only eroded the edge of them. Work eats the soul.
oh dale, you poor sod as we say in England....what a nightmare. And breakfast of all meals...YUK. I cannot imagine being in a job I hate. It would drive me to the end of loving kindness that's for sure.
Beth, thank you for your understanding. I realised these past few days when I was not sitting that actually giving up my obsession with having my needs met seems to be what it is all about for me right now. I can name a thousand needs not met, except that learning to put someone else first when they are in pain is quite another need I clearly have. (But it's so hard in practice, especially when you are a diva like me!) Meditation went out the window and was a sort of conscious choice, and it will come back in now I am back home for a long time and can hopefully re-establish a rhythm.
We had our last perf tonight. I am so thankful I can pour all my feelings into my work. It was a very emotive and passionate bit o' Scarlatti tonight!
God I'm so grateful for how normal you all are sometimes, as much as how inspirational!
Oh Dale. I read this and laughed but also felt sad that you are feeling this way. Goodness knows, I've not been far from this at other times in my own life. If I could, I'd magic myself over to Portland and ask you for a walk or a sweaterhunt ;-) ...anything to give you a moment of relief. The good thing is that things just don't stay the same and as much as you inhabit this place now, you won't always. Much love to you, friend. May you feel it.
And Ruth, you too, and J. I'm pushing as much out on these cyberwaves as I can. Of course, we are all normal! And not perfect, happily, in my opinion. Hopefully our joint interest in meditation and our support of each other will only add to the chances of maintaining some sort of balance most of the time, or at least returning to it reasonably quickly.
And Jean sleeping poorly, too. And tired Udge. And structure-seeking Mary. Love to you all.
I had a good sit this afternoon, too, and wondered why why why I can't keep to this every single day. But no beating up on oneself! Tomorrow is another opportunity.
I can hear winter fireworks in the distance, down at the Old Port of Montreal. It is a festival of lights this week; maybe we'll have to go down and take a look one evening.
It's just too late and I'm just too tired. But Jean, hope you're sleeping well as I write this, and you, too, Beth; Barbara, sometimes we want to set schedules for meditating and it's because the deepest parts of ourselves need that, so good luck, committment is really only a deep promise to oneself; Ruth, that was some profound wisdom today that I'll remember; Lorianne, welcome back; Dale, oh my! how funny your exit from your home was, and how dismal work sounded- I do hope the situation at your job resolves itself soon and I think we should all appear in your kitchen to cook you & Martha breakfast, take you jogging, and meditate with you. And Udge, I know! I went off to tutor my darling Grade 2 student, but, oh, I was in love, falling for the man I've been dating for 2 or 3 months, I swear I was on the love drug and got on the train going the wrong way... it was delerious. I was only about 15 minutes late and stayed longer. It was wonderful to be so enamoured that I didn't realize for 5 stops that I was going the wrong way! Meditating, as ever, every night...it's nice, because whatever ups and downs, that remains.
Dale: what was that song about "putting on my cleanest dirty shirt"? I feel for you in this discomfort and (temporarily) miserable job, but I also laughed out loud at your description. I too have moods when I inflict such meals on myself, as punishment for something or other that I haven't yet worked out.
Ruth: big soft gentle hugs to you and J. Our (un)common normality is a pleasure to me too.
Jean: was it you who wrote recently about your surprise and pleasure when others responded positively and in kind to your admission of unhappiness? (the birthday piece? but blogger won't display so I can't check). What we are all telling each other here is just this, it's a way to escape the social unacceptability of feeling unhappy and unsuccessful - except insofar as they help advertisers sell us things that will cure neither of these problems. To see someone else say "I am sleeping badly" or "I was foul-tempered and resentful today", especially someone that I like, is very liberating because it permits me to admit to feeling the same.
Enough already. I have successfully procrastinated the morning away without doing any of the important tasks that I've been putting off all week.
19 Comments:
God bless the subconscious mind! There I was, sitting happily away trying not to think about how tired I am (really need some quality time in bed this weekend) when I jerked upright with a cry of "oh my god" as though somebody had connected me to the electric mains. I have an appointment downtown, and just enough time to shower before going.
Ah well, it was a good seven minutes' sit. I'll try to sit a second time this evening, although I expect that I will (again) be too tired.
Just goes to show that meditation is not escaping but indeed 'plugging in' to the here and now, doesn't it? Hope you made your appointment Udge, and that you get to catch up on sleep soon.
Yesterday, having slept badly, I clung to my bed until the last possible minute and left for work without sitting - the first time in ages. I felt a bit 'wrong' all day, only managed to sit late at night before going to sleep, managed to get up in time to sit this morning, though still sleeping badly and over-tired. Felt much better afterwards. I think I'm starting to need it like drinking water.
Love to everyone. I now end every meditation with 5 minutes of loving kindness, starting with this group and moving outwards. It's nice.
HI everyone.
I've finally got back on the rickshaw thismorning. Everything seems to be going wrong for us, we have been towed off the motorway three times in 2 weeks. The breakages (inc gaggia coffe machine) have cost about 3600 euros so far. Yesterday, having only just got the car back I had a tyre burst on the motorway and had to stand in the freezing rain for an hour before the assitance got to me. A run of bad luck not just of three but of nine so far and counting...
the thing is I am finding myself much more able to deal with the shocks and yesterday after the initial panic and fear I actually managed to laugh about it. J however is taking each knock harder than the last (glad to hear your understanding of that one barbara!) and I am finding that reallyy really hard and painful. I was sitting in my meditation today with the image of reeds and brittle sticks and I suddenly saw that if I were a truly accepting and present reed I would accept j's brittle state at the moment rather than judge it as 'undesirable' just like I accept the car problems, so therefore the reed has a ways still to go to be truly reedlike. So perhaps this is the lesson here for me.
By the way today is the first anniversary of J's amazing shifting light site. Anyone passing by writing a little birthday message would be welcome.
Ruth, big warm hugs to you and J. It is absolutely vital that he keeps his site going until I sell my flat and am able to buy a painting. I think the lesson you describe is one of the hardest of all, and correspondingly worthwhile.
Hi everyone
I have taken myself by the metaphorical scruff of the neck and given myself a metaphorical but compassionate shaking this morning. My lack of structure is just not good for me.
Therefore I am refreshing my commmitment inthe period I am not working to 2 x 20 minute chanting sessions (morning and evening) to be followed immediately by 5-10 minutes silent meditation. I'm not working now, I can do it. Like Nike says: just do it.
Udge: :-) and thanks for taking the time to post the date in spite of your rush.
Off to (another)interview now ...
Wow, everyone's here already!!! :-)
Udge, I hope you made your appointment. Jean, I hope you catch up on sleep soon. And Ruth, MAJOR hugs for the major car troubles you've had: how terribly frustrating!
I ended up not sitting yesterday, although I did take an afternoon NAP which I'm hoping will bring me back to "almost normal" on the jet-lag/sleep deprivation front.
This morning, I sat 20 minutes first thing: back in the saddle again!
Hi Everybody ...actually managed to meditate (for some reason I can't call it 'sitting') for ten whole minutes at 5.45am this morning: instead of clinging grimly to those last shreds of sleep I let them go and got on with it. Feeling more in touch with myself just now and consequently aware of a well of deep distress. Ach - is it the time of year or the full moon or what ..so many folk are struggling right now.
Ruth I really recognise your description of judging emotions as desirable or undesirable and am conscious of how much harm and struggle it causes me (never mind the unfortunate recipient of my judgement!!)...
All - it's so good to know that everyone is plugging away getting on with it in one form or another ...I've wanted to 'talk' a bit more about my practice and how I feel about it as well as say a bit about TM ...but a lot of stuff has descended so it will have to wait. Hugs to everyone (including the silent ones ...)
Greetings Dear Friends:
What an excellent idea for a blog :) On the path. every moment, every action is a meditation. Thus, may I commend to you my book Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel, a mystical adventure tale on the Sufi path of Love. You can view the book and read an excerpt at http://www.masterofthejinn.com
Peace and Blessings,
Irving
Ruth: what Jean said. More hugs and love to you as you deal with this incredibly frustrating string of bad luck.
I'm not sleeping well either, which is just about the worst thing for my mood and ability to cope calmly. I'm trying to hang in there, like everyone else, and to keep up the meditation even in short periods. Like Ruth and unlike some of you, I have to fit my life around another person's, so my time is not always my own to plan, and plans often have to be changed. This is both a joy and a difficulty - and another thing to work on accepting and handling with equanimity. Mostly, though, my life is just very busy and stressful right now, and here in northern North America the weather is really awful. We ALL have trouble here this time of year!
Sat this morning for a few minutes, until my bladder insisted I get out of bed. Foul-tempered and resentful today. Had to be sure to be here at 9:00 for a meeting that had no purpose whatsoever, but which lasted nearly till ten, including a little homily by my boss about how we live in a culture of entitlement, and how much better everything would be if teachers could still hit kids like in the good old days.
So I needed to be here by nine, and I dawdled on the net, loathing myself, until eight, which gave me fifteen minutes to shower and bolt into the car. Except that I had no clean laundry. So I threw in a load of whites (so at least I'll have something tomorrow), went up to take a shower (a meager one; the hot water was all being consumed by the washer), and then drove to work without benefit of breakfast, coffee, or underwear. I do have a clean shirt, though, because some mail-order ones arrived last night. I smell of sizing, or whatever it is that gives new fabric that stiffness and faint chlorine smell.
Tempted to just walk out of work here and never come back; a little curious as to how long it would take them to get around to firing me. Weeks, I expect. At eleven I sloped off to get a foul breakfast at the local pancake shop, a mass of eggs (in Beaverton they are under the impression that if you scramble eggs and then leave them sitting still in the pan until they form a bonded brown-bottomed mass you have made an "omelet") larded with various agglomerations of nitrates in assorted brownish-red colors that were supposed, I think, to represent different meats traditionally consumed by my tribe. Coffee in a big thermos, which kept it at an even temperature (lukewarm) all through my meal. Why do I inflict this sort of food on myself, I wonder?
Loving-kindness is a state of mind that feels so alien to me today that I can't even picture it. My imagination is completely cut off from it. Interesting to watch how being angry makes that utterly inaccessible to me. Not just that I can't feel it -- I really can't conceive of it, can't imagine what it is that Jean was doing this morning.
May all beings be without mornings like this :-) I can generate that aspiration, at least.
ohmigod, Dale, blessing, love and hugs to you -- and a better morning tomorrow. I wish I could materialize in your kitchen and cook you breakfast myself!
Oh Dale, I was in a foul mood this evening until you made me laugh so much - very far from this morning's loving kindness. Oh dear. I do sympathise. I have a lot of mornings like that. Meditation has only eroded the edge of them. Work eats the soul.
oh dale, you poor sod as we say in England....what a nightmare. And breakfast of all meals...YUK. I cannot imagine being in a job I hate. It would drive me to the end of loving kindness that's for sure.
Beth, thank you for your understanding. I realised these past few days when I was not sitting that actually giving up my obsession with having my needs met seems to be what it is all about for me right now. I can name a thousand needs not met, except that learning to put someone else first when they are in pain is quite another need I clearly have. (But it's so hard in practice, especially when you are a diva like me!) Meditation went out the window and was a sort of conscious choice, and it will come back in now I am back home for a long time and can hopefully re-establish a rhythm.
We had our last perf tonight. I am so thankful I can pour all my feelings into my work. It was a very emotive and passionate bit o' Scarlatti tonight!
God I'm so grateful for how normal you all are sometimes, as much as how inspirational!
Oh Dale. I read this and laughed but also felt sad that you are feeling this way. Goodness knows, I've not been far from this at other times in my own life. If I could, I'd magic myself over to Portland and ask you for a walk or a sweaterhunt ;-) ...anything to give you a moment of relief. The good thing is that things just don't stay the same and as much as you inhabit this place now, you won't always. Much love to you, friend. May you feel it.
And Ruth, you too, and J. I'm pushing as much out on these cyberwaves as I can. Of course, we are all normal! And not perfect, happily, in my opinion. Hopefully our joint interest in meditation and our support of each other will only add to the chances of maintaining some sort of balance most of the time, or at least returning to it reasonably quickly.
And Jean sleeping poorly, too. And tired Udge. And structure-seeking Mary. Love to you all.
Can't tell you how much better you all have made me feel. Thank you.
I had a good sit this afternoon, too, and wondered why why why I can't keep to this every single day. But no beating up on oneself! Tomorrow is another opportunity.
I can hear winter fireworks in the distance, down at the Old Port of Montreal. It is a festival of lights this week; maybe we'll have to go down and take a look one evening.
It's just too late and I'm just too tired. But Jean, hope you're sleeping well as I write this, and you, too, Beth; Barbara, sometimes we want to set schedules for meditating and it's because the deepest parts of ourselves need that, so good luck, committment is really only a deep promise to oneself; Ruth, that was some profound wisdom today that I'll remember; Lorianne, welcome back; Dale, oh my! how funny your exit from your home was, and how dismal work sounded- I do hope the situation at your job resolves itself soon and I think we should all appear in your kitchen to cook you & Martha breakfast, take you jogging, and meditate with you. And Udge, I know! I went off to tutor my darling Grade 2 student, but, oh, I was in love, falling for the man I've been dating for 2 or 3 months, I swear I was on the love drug and got on the train going the wrong way... it was delerious. I was only about 15 minutes late and stayed longer. It was wonderful to be so enamoured that I didn't realize for 5 stops that I was going the wrong way! Meditating, as ever, every night...it's nice, because whatever ups and downs, that remains.
Dale: what was that song about "putting on my cleanest dirty shirt"? I feel for you in this discomfort and (temporarily) miserable job, but I also laughed out loud at your description. I too have moods when I inflict such meals on myself, as punishment for something or other that I haven't yet worked out.
Ruth: big soft gentle hugs to you and J. Our (un)common normality is a pleasure to me too.
Jean: was it you who wrote recently about your surprise and pleasure when others responded positively and in kind to your admission of unhappiness? (the birthday piece? but blogger won't display so I can't check). What we are all telling each other here is just this, it's a way to escape the social unacceptability of feeling unhappy and unsuccessful - except insofar as they help advertisers sell us things that will cure neither of these problems. To see someone else say "I am sleeping badly" or "I was foul-tempered and resentful today", especially someone that I like, is very liberating because it permits me to admit to feeling the same.
Enough already. I have successfully procrastinated the morning away without doing any of the important tasks that I've been putting off all week.
Hugs and good wishes to all.
Udge, I don't think I said quite that, but it is certainly my experience and I completely agree with you.
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