Feeling sad. Still sitting. Trying to just be with it and not shut down to my feelings, as I have been learning in the recent meditation class. I'm doing an intensive drawing class Tues to Fri evenings this week - maybe this is the kind of meditation I need: very present, but not stuck in words. I hope so.
Oh, Jean...I'm sorry to hear about your sadness. I wonder if it's the inevitable downside to the recent progress you've felt in your practice: for every hill there's a valley, etc. Or maybe it's not related at all, just random, and difficult to face in either case.
Hugs, too, to Ruth: personally, I find that jealousy (if jealousy is one of the things I read between the lines in your comment yesterday) is *more* difficult to deal with than outright anger. Jealousy is so subtle, and at times it feels so *right*, a kind of indignant self-righteousness. ("How dare *she* get what *I* deserve!") I have no wisdom when it comes to dealing with jealousy, if that's one of the things you're dealing with, just the reassurance that when it comes to jealousy, yeah, I've been there & done that. :-)
Yesterday I ended up spending 15 minutes of "serious cushion time" along with a little bit of chanting, too. It's been a loooooong time since I chanted--I feel a bit weird doing it in my apartment with neighbors around--but it was late enough in the day that everyone was awake, and it felt WONDERFUL to do. So maybe I'll do a repeat performance later today, in the afternoon?
Jean, hugs and empathy to you. I hope the sadness lifts soon.
Ruth, thinking of you: peaceful thoughts! The indignation is so understandable - I used to get all bent out of shape about a "favored" soprano in our choir who was also so obnoxious. I know you'll try not to get caught in the negative feelings but I also know how hard it is when it's in your face! Remember you are bigger and more precious than that situation, and so is Music.
Brenda, I love your Linden tree story! I will be going to the lake this week too, to be with my father, and I look forward to "communing" with it and with the woods. They will help me as I pack up and deal with my mother's clothes and personal things, and help my father deal with the cemetery, gravestones, and such. It won't be easy but I think these are important steps that help us to move on.
Hmm. do I expect 'progress' in meditation to make me feel less sad? I don't think so. Why should it? Maybe quite the opposite, really. I think it's likely to make me FEEL sadness more deeply instead of numbing myself. I think it's all what Dale's been writing about: hunger. Grief, envy, anger, loneliness - all of it is hunger for what we're not getting, aren't going to get, once had, never had, and round and round... I think I only aspire to being able to feel it and survive the feeling without ducking it. Rather fed up and at a loose end yesterday, I suddenly found myself transported back to my feelings one summer, oh, nearly 30 years ago, when my lover went back to his regular partner and my housemates were all away for long Summer holidays (this was 1977 or 8; we had shaken off monogamy and were not possessive; oh no, no!). I was quite alone and went to work and drank too much (haven't done that for many years!) and it seemed like a Summer of 6 or 8 years, not weeks. I was shocked - it was so VERY long ago! I don't think I ever fully felt my feelings in that long-ago Summer, I trudged through it with a frozen heart, and so they can still leap out to haunt me. I just aspire to being a bit more in the present, facing and dealing with things a bit more, so that they don't all sit for ever on my shoulders.
Jean, oh I am so glad to hear you're doing an intensive drawing class all week! And sadness, just being with it, it'll pass, it always does. Love to you.
Lorianne, chanting out loud is wonderful because it lets us use our voices in beautiful ways. The sadhana tape I used to chant to is in storage, but soon... an hour of that, and it would be impossible not to feel bliss! Wishing you bliss!
Ruth, when someone is in an important position where the quality of the whole is at stake and that person is not there by merit it's most difficult. That means everyone else has to pick up the slack and try to compensate as best as possible. Wishing you as much emotional ease as possible through this no doubt trying situation.
Beth, the packing up of clothes and gravestones and the cemetery are important demarcation points, but emotionally, owww. I remember feeling a a complex set of emotions all the way from feelings of abandonment and loneliness to a sense of peace and release, as well as commitment to my family who were struggling terribly. One brother had a breakdown and I had to hold everything together for the family for four years, leaving university, my own academic future, never to really return either.
I hope you're not making any major decisions because it's probably not the best time for that.
In retrospect, I think I'd rather have sunk into my grief and kept on my path, rather than feeling I had to be responsible for everyone and take care of things that I wasn't meant to.
Meaning, be careful about major decisions right now.
Not sure where all that came from!
The Linden tree is marvelous! Last night I stood under it while my dog raced around and felt absolutely bathed in love - radiating from the branches above me, golden, warm, enlightening. It's like being in a time warp, a pocket of spectacular engery, something special. Whatever it is, I'm grateful for it, and send love back...
Devon, oh, thank you! I shall join you! The site looks great! I find that I pretty well receive everything I want or need but I need to want it passionately and intensely. No luke-warmness. Crisis and passion, and then letting go. I don't have much space to set up an alter where I live but I will start perhaps drawing a home, or something like that. I will subscribe to your new site too... Last night I focussed intently on "home" for all of us who are looking, and am intrigued as to how this concept, "home," will unfold.
Brenda and Beth - I called my 'special' tree The Mummy Tree ... it held me and kept me safe ... I never knew my real mum
My Mummy Tree was very large and round; it sat well back from the shore, behind huge logs of driftwood. I don't know what kind of tree it was ... there was a long branch extending out toward the ocean, and I sat there for comfort
That was quite a few years ago now, and I've moved away from that geographical place, but the Mummy Tree is always there and I can return at any time in daydreams or sleeping dreams
Oh my, yes, remember when we had all transcended monagamy? Oh, Christ. Another thing we might have called it is "Devil take the hindmost," but I don't recollect that we ever did :-)
Ruth, I think square one is probably the only real square. All the rest of them we just make up. :-)
{{{Janice}}} Man life hasn't pulled its punches with you, has it?
& hugs all round, actually. Devon, I'll look if I have a chance, but I'm snowed under already!
But I sat an hour last night and it was fabulous, so still, the sweat trickling down my neck and back was gorgeous, the summer making love to me.
Now I'm thinking of Stephen Maturin, who "disliked some of X's warmer similes." Tough, Stephen :-)
jean, i agree with lorraine. You have been making some huge shifts, it seems letting sadness come might all be part of mourning old yous - including the you that didn't let yourself feel sadness???
it's funny, it's not jealousy ( i don't want to play principal cello and do not need to be favoured by the conducter) but indignation that someone with no experience but alot of push and shove should be leading - an will be ruining - the music i love so much, and it will be my job to follow her lead in every ghastly vulgar detail. Musically it will be unbearable.
But yes I know jealousy. It has eaten a good year of my soul's life, and this is not it! IT is much much worse and in it I became mad and contemplated real violence.
Janice, i love your mummy tree image. Today in the break in a 12 hour recording session I sat between three trees, and though I didn't know it then, I was gathering mother energy for the next stint. It worked too.
Thanks for all your support. I feel if I can report back here next week, I might just be able to 'direct myself higher' as a friend said.
8 Comments:
Feeling sad. Still sitting. Trying to just be with it and not shut down to my feelings, as I have been learning in the recent meditation class. I'm doing an intensive drawing class Tues to Fri evenings this week - maybe this is the kind of meditation I need: very present, but not stuck in words. I hope so.
Oh, Jean...I'm sorry to hear about your sadness. I wonder if it's the inevitable downside to the recent progress you've felt in your practice: for every hill there's a valley, etc. Or maybe it's not related at all, just random, and difficult to face in either case.
Hugs, too, to Ruth: personally, I find that jealousy (if jealousy is one of the things I read between the lines in your comment yesterday) is *more* difficult to deal with than outright anger. Jealousy is so subtle, and at times it feels so *right*, a kind of indignant self-righteousness. ("How dare *she* get what *I* deserve!") I have no wisdom when it comes to dealing with jealousy, if that's one of the things you're dealing with, just the reassurance that when it comes to jealousy, yeah, I've been there & done that. :-)
Yesterday I ended up spending 15 minutes of "serious cushion time" along with a little bit of chanting, too. It's been a loooooong time since I chanted--I feel a bit weird doing it in my apartment with neighbors around--but it was late enough in the day that everyone was awake, and it felt WONDERFUL to do. So maybe I'll do a repeat performance later today, in the afternoon?
Jean, hugs and empathy to you. I hope the sadness lifts soon.
Ruth, thinking of you: peaceful thoughts! The indignation is so understandable - I used to get all bent out of shape about a "favored" soprano in our choir who was also so obnoxious. I know you'll try not to get caught in the negative feelings but I also know how hard it is when it's in your face! Remember you are bigger and more precious than that situation, and so is Music.
Brenda, I love your Linden tree story! I will be going to the lake this week too, to be with my father, and I look forward to "communing" with it and with the woods. They will help me as I pack up and deal with my mother's clothes and personal things, and help my father deal with the cemetery, gravestones, and such. It won't be easy but I think these are important steps that help us to move on.
Devon, going now to look at your new blog.
Hmm. do I expect 'progress' in meditation to make me feel less sad? I don't think so. Why should it? Maybe quite the opposite, really. I think it's likely to make me FEEL sadness more deeply instead of numbing myself. I think it's all what Dale's been writing about: hunger. Grief, envy, anger, loneliness - all of it is hunger for what we're not getting, aren't going to get, once had, never had, and round and round... I think I only aspire to being able to feel it and survive the feeling without ducking it. Rather fed up and at a loose end yesterday, I suddenly found myself transported back to my feelings one summer, oh, nearly 30 years ago, when my lover went back to his regular partner and my housemates were all away for long Summer holidays (this was 1977 or 8; we had shaken off monogamy and were not possessive; oh no, no!). I was quite alone and went to work and drank too much (haven't done that for many years!) and it seemed like a Summer of 6 or 8 years, not weeks. I was shocked - it was so VERY long ago! I don't think I ever fully felt my feelings in that long-ago Summer, I trudged through it with a frozen heart, and so they can still leap out to haunt me. I just aspire to being a bit more in the present, facing and dealing with things a bit more, so that they don't all sit for ever on my shoulders.
Jean, oh I am so glad to hear you're doing an intensive drawing class all week! And sadness, just being with it, it'll pass, it always does. Love to you.
Lorianne, chanting out loud is wonderful because it lets us use our voices in beautiful ways. The sadhana tape I used to chant to is in storage, but soon... an hour of that, and it would be impossible not to feel bliss! Wishing you bliss!
Ruth, when someone is in an important position where the quality of the whole is at stake and that person is not there by merit it's most difficult. That means everyone else has to pick up the slack and try to compensate as best as possible. Wishing you as much emotional ease as possible through this no doubt trying situation.
Beth, the packing up of clothes and gravestones and the cemetery are important demarcation points, but emotionally, owww. I remember feeling a a complex set of emotions all the way from feelings of abandonment and loneliness to a sense of peace and release, as well as commitment to my family who were struggling terribly. One brother had a breakdown and I had to hold everything together for the family for four years, leaving university, my own academic future, never to really return either.
I hope you're not making any major decisions because it's probably not the best time for that.
In retrospect, I think I'd rather have sunk into my grief and kept on my path, rather than feeling I had to be responsible for everyone and take care of things that I wasn't meant to.
Meaning, be careful about major decisions right now.
Not sure where all that came from!
The Linden tree is marvelous! Last night I stood under it while my dog raced around and felt absolutely bathed in love - radiating from the branches above me, golden, warm, enlightening. It's like being in a time warp, a pocket of spectacular engery, something special. Whatever it is, I'm grateful for it, and send love back...
Devon, oh, thank you! I shall join you! The site looks great! I find that I pretty well receive everything I want or need but I need to want it passionately and intensely. No luke-warmness. Crisis and passion, and then letting go. I don't have much space to set up an alter where I live but I will start perhaps drawing a home, or something like that. I will subscribe to your new site too... Last night I focussed intently on "home" for all of us who are looking, and am intrigued as to how this concept, "home," will unfold.
Many thanks xoxo
Brenda and Beth -
I called my 'special' tree The Mummy Tree ... it held me and kept me safe ... I never knew my real mum
My Mummy Tree was very large and round; it sat well back from the shore, behind huge logs of driftwood. I don't know what kind of tree it was ... there was a long branch extending out toward the ocean, and I sat there for comfort
That was quite a few years ago now, and I've moved away from that geographical place, but the Mummy Tree is always there and I can return at any time in daydreams or sleeping dreams
{{{Jean}}}
Oh my, yes, remember when we had all transcended monagamy? Oh, Christ. Another thing we might have called it is "Devil take the hindmost," but I don't recollect that we ever did :-)
Ruth, I think square one is probably the only real square. All the rest of them we just make up. :-)
{{{Janice}}} Man life hasn't pulled its punches with you, has it?
& hugs all round, actually. Devon, I'll look if I have a chance, but I'm snowed under already!
But I sat an hour last night and it was fabulous, so still, the sweat trickling down my neck and back was gorgeous, the summer making love to me.
Now I'm thinking of Stephen Maturin, who "disliked some of X's warmer similes." Tough, Stephen :-)
beth let the lake sing to you.
jean, i agree with lorraine. You have been making some huge shifts, it seems letting sadness come might all be part of mourning old yous - including the you that didn't let yourself feel sadness???
it's funny, it's not jealousy ( i don't want to play principal cello and do not need to be favoured by the conducter) but indignation that someone with no experience but alot of push and shove should be leading - an will be ruining - the music i love so much, and it will be my job to follow her lead in every ghastly vulgar detail. Musically it will be unbearable.
But yes I know jealousy. It has eaten a good year of my soul's life, and this is not it! IT is much much worse and in it I became mad and contemplated real violence.
Janice, i love your mummy tree image. Today in the break in a 12 hour recording session I sat between three trees, and though I didn't know it then, I was gathering mother energy for the next stint. It worked too.
Thanks for all your support. I feel if I can report back here next week, I might just be able to 'direct myself higher' as a friend said.
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