Just a quick word to say I'm still here! I've felt "unworthy" to comment since I *still* haven't found my way back to my mat, the leap from "coming home/jetlag" to "last minute prep/classes starting" taking up too much of my mental bandwidth.
I hope to reintroduce myself to my cushion today. In the meantime, I hope everyone's doing well.
'Falling off the mat' is no reason not to comment Lorianne! Personally I can't believe that you don't meditate anyhow, in stray moments, moments when you gaze and ponder, when looking out the window, when cooking...
I'm still on this self-healing through self-love process. An example. My arm was so sore with bursitus that I could barely lift it for getting dressed and was always yelping if I forgot and moved it backwards. This has gotten worse since last September, but about a month ago I remembered. Love that arm. When it hurts, I hold my palm over it and imagine loving, radiant, healing energy pouring into the stressed muscle points, the nerves, the bone. I imagine this pranic energy as bearing a molecular brightness, a radiance. And I send tons of compassion and love to my poor arm. I was so irked with it I hadn't forgotten to love it! And, not surprisingly, it's getting better. It barely hurts now. It's not that this process of self-healing through self-love is fast by any means, but it's effective.
Other examples - the rosacea's gone. I'm entirely off medication. While I haven't tried being in direct sun, I can go out at dusk without a hat and no problem. This is supposed to be a progressive disease that requires constant and lifelong medication (creams, steroids, antibiotics, laser treatment). Loving my skin, my face, has been a long, hard journey. I was repulsed by the rosacea.
Part of the healing journey was giving up any and all rationalizations of 'I have it "because..."' There is no reason; things happen. It's not even worth going into. That's looking backwards in a way that seems to simply keep the problem manifested. It's better to focus on where one wants to go. Like that Gretsky puck.
Hi Lorianne. Having just read your exceptionally beautiful and thoughtful blog-piece about prisons, I'd find it hard to feel your time would have been better spent sitting. Sometimes other things have to find expression and it takes a while for everything to reach a new balance, I think.
I had a rocky week last week, missed sitting two days running and then another one a few days later, which is really a lot for me. But then on Saturday I went to the Buddhist centre and my meditation session was one of those where you really suddenly feel it deeply again, and our discussion about meditation all resonated with me, and, and, one of those times when it all feels right. Sometimes things find their own pattern, their own way.
What the teacher and others were saying in said discussion was very relevant to questions raised by others here over the weekend. The teacher asked what it is that sitting meditation 'does', what it is that it changes, so that we feel sometimes that energies in our lives are slowly being transformed - it's by no means obvious why sitting still would or should ever do this, or how it does. The image we collectively came up with was of a kind of gravity or centrifugal force (sorry, scientists, I'm sure these are two completely different things)that we create in ourselves when we regularly sit quietly with ourselves, and that gathers into itself more and more strands of our feelings and experience, so that over time they start to feel both like part of one thing and like we are part of a wider one thing, so that we have access to bits of ourselves and to making more connections, and are generally just perhaps slowly more integrated and less scattered... ach, it sounded clearer when we said it on Saturday. Perhaps it's clearer as an image than in words -what I was seeing when we were having this discussion was a force field full of randomly floating molecules, drawn by the energy focus of meditation into a slowly emerging drifting spiral shape...
Brenda, lots of love coming to your arm from England! I completely agree. The terrible, disempowering way that doctors tell us something is never going to get better is deeply shocking - all they mean is that they don't have a specific medication to offer that guarantees instant cure, which is quite a different thing!
There’s a beautiful stone (rock?) sitting on my altar this morning. What’s the difference between a stone and a rock, is a rock bigger? where’s the line of crossing over? Anyway, I brought this back from one of the beaches on our camping/hiking trip up the west coast.
I remembered the sangha in Seattle that I sat with a few years ago, The Three Treasures. At that time, they were sharing space in the Catholic Workers’ House, and there was an equal number of group members who were Roman Catholic. Instead of a Buddha statue, there was a magnificent rock on the altar.
Something magical seems to happen over the Labor Day weekend each year. The air smells different, cleaner, fresher. There’s fog starting to roll in each morning. … it wipes away the sticky oppressive heat of August.
Is Labor Day recognized as a holiday in other parts of the world outside North America?
Janice, how nice to see your picture! I've appreciated all the comments lately and just haven't had a lot to say, plus like Lorianne I've barely been sitting at all, just a few minutes in the morning, and yesterday's long session at church. Brenda, I'm so glad to hear that these chronic problems are getting better. And Jean, I wish you a better week. You have such a remarkably calm and articulate way of talking about what's going on in your life - it makes it hard to believe you get off center, but I know you do, like all of us!
Thanks you beautiful women, but my arm's fine, really it is. Ever since I decided to start loving it again instead of being irked at it, it's been improving. Ten months of way too much pain; the last month, less & less to almost gone now. Nothing has changed but my attitude.
Not berating it; but treating it with compassion. If people can respond to such caring, why not arms?
The worst pain I've ever been in, by far, was from bursitis. I've suffered my share of broken bones and torn knee-cartilege and dental work and burns and abrasions. Most of it rolls right off me, and I don't ordinarily bother with pain medicine or analgesics. But bursitis, that was *pain*. I would have taken anything, and I completely lost my equanimity. Became snarling and surly.
I've found that glucosamine, in addition to love, is good for helping connective tissue heal.
9 Comments:
Hey there...
Just a quick word to say I'm still here! I've felt "unworthy" to comment since I *still* haven't found my way back to my mat, the leap from "coming home/jetlag" to "last minute prep/classes starting" taking up too much of my mental bandwidth.
I hope to reintroduce myself to my cushion today. In the meantime, I hope everyone's doing well.
'Falling off the mat' is no reason not to comment Lorianne! Personally I can't believe that you don't meditate anyhow, in stray moments, moments when you gaze and ponder, when looking out the window, when cooking...
I'm still on this self-healing through self-love process. An example. My arm was so sore with bursitus that I could barely lift it for getting dressed and was always yelping if I forgot and moved it backwards. This has gotten worse since last September, but about a month ago I remembered. Love that arm. When it hurts, I hold my palm over it and imagine loving, radiant, healing energy pouring into the stressed muscle points, the nerves, the bone. I imagine this pranic energy as bearing a molecular brightness, a radiance. And I send tons of compassion and love to my poor arm. I was so irked with it I hadn't forgotten to love it! And, not surprisingly, it's getting better. It barely hurts now. It's not that this process of self-healing through self-love is fast by any means, but it's effective.
Other examples - the rosacea's gone. I'm entirely off medication. While I haven't tried being in direct sun, I can go out at dusk without a hat and no problem. This is supposed to be a progressive disease that requires constant and lifelong medication (creams, steroids, antibiotics, laser treatment). Loving my skin, my face, has been a long, hard journey. I was repulsed by the rosacea.
Part of the healing journey was giving up any and all rationalizations of 'I have it "because..."' There is no reason; things happen. It's not even worth going into. That's looking backwards in a way that seems to simply keep the problem manifested. It's better to focus on where one wants to go. Like that Gretsky puck.
Hi Lorianne. Having just read your exceptionally beautiful and thoughtful blog-piece about prisons, I'd find it hard to feel your time would have been better spent sitting. Sometimes other things have to find expression and it takes a while for everything to reach a new balance, I think.
I had a rocky week last week, missed sitting two days running and then another one a few days later, which is really a lot for me. But then on Saturday I went to the Buddhist centre and my meditation session was one of those where you really suddenly feel it deeply again, and our discussion about meditation all resonated with me, and, and, one of those times when it all feels right. Sometimes things find their own pattern, their own way.
What the teacher and others were saying in said discussion was very relevant to questions raised by others here over the weekend. The teacher asked what it is that sitting meditation 'does', what it is that it changes, so that we feel sometimes that energies in our lives are slowly being transformed - it's by no means obvious why sitting still would or should ever do this, or how it does. The image we collectively came up with was of a kind of gravity or centrifugal force (sorry, scientists, I'm sure these are two completely different things)that we create in ourselves when we regularly sit quietly with ourselves, and that gathers into itself more and more strands of our feelings and experience, so that over time they start to feel both like part of one thing and like we are part of a wider one thing, so that we have access to bits of ourselves and to making more connections, and are generally just perhaps slowly more integrated and less scattered... ach, it sounded clearer when we said it on Saturday. Perhaps it's clearer as an image than in words -what I was seeing when we were having this discussion was a force field full of randomly floating molecules, drawn by the energy focus of meditation into a slowly emerging drifting spiral shape...
Brenda, lots of love coming to your arm from England! I completely agree. The terrible, disempowering way that doctors tell us something is never going to get better is deeply shocking - all they mean is that they don't have a specific medication to offer that guarantees instant cure, which is quite a different thing!
There’s a beautiful stone (rock?) sitting on my altar this morning. What’s the difference between a stone and a rock, is a rock bigger? where’s the line of crossing over? Anyway, I brought this back from one of the beaches on our camping/hiking trip up the west coast.
I remembered the sangha in Seattle that I sat with a few years ago, The Three Treasures. At that time, they were sharing space in the Catholic Workers’ House, and there was an equal number of group members who were Roman Catholic. Instead of a Buddha statue, there was a magnificent rock on the altar.
Something magical seems to happen over the Labor Day weekend each year. The air smells different, cleaner, fresher. There’s fog starting to roll in each morning. … it wipes away the sticky oppressive heat of August.
Is Labor Day recognized as a holiday in other parts of the world outside North America?
Janice, how nice to see your picture! I've appreciated all the comments lately and just haven't had a lot to say, plus like Lorianne I've barely been sitting at all, just a few minutes in the morning, and yesterday's long session at church. Brenda, I'm so glad to hear that these chronic problems are getting better. And Jean, I wish you a better week. You have such a remarkably calm and articulate way of talking about what's going on in your life - it makes it hard to believe you get off center, but I know you do, like all of us!
I suppose the all the rest counts as meditation, too...but I'm much too stubborn to give myself credit. ;-)
I just sat for about 7 minutes: just long enough to feel like I'm back "on" my cushion after so long away.
Sending lots of lovingly healing vibes toward Brenda's arm, and anyone else (or any other body parts!) who need it.
Thanks you beautiful women, but my arm's fine, really it is. Ever since I decided to start loving it again instead of being irked at it, it's been improving. Ten months of way too much pain; the last month, less & less to almost gone now. Nothing has changed but my attitude.
Not berating it; but treating it with compassion. If people can respond to such caring, why not arms?
:)
Hugs, Brenda.
The worst pain I've ever been in, by far, was from bursitis. I've suffered my share of broken bones and torn knee-cartilege and dental work and burns and abrasions. Most of it rolls right off me, and I don't ordinarily bother with pain medicine or analgesics. But bursitis, that was *pain*. I would have taken anything, and I completely lost my equanimity. Became snarling and surly.
I've found that glucosamine, in addition to love, is good for helping connective tissue heal.
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