Rails Off
This past Sunday CB noted that in the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism there are many guideposts, ways to let you know you're on the right track. In Zen you're sat down on a cushion, encouraged to be still and all the other rails are taken off.
In the past few days it feels like I've gone about dismantling and taking down some of the few remaining rails on my life. I have a great weight of mourning, of feeling pain at disappointing people and leaving the comfortable safety of routine. I also feel a humming undercurrent of excitement on the changes that will be in my future. I told HB last night that I believed I was making the right choice for myself, what was true, however, that didn't lessen the difficulty of it, the pain of it. So pain, mourning, excitement, and love all at once.
Since I've taken the rails off, pulling down all my roles, make-believe ideas about myself, everything feels as intense as it really is. All I can do, again and again, is be present for it. I'm aware of all the ways in which I wish I wasn't, the times I'd like to just crawl in bed and hide, sleep the time away. Practice and love brings me back.
Generosity
This first Dharma talk during Ango was given by CB on the topic of generosity, the Paramita dana.
She talked to two main points: the ways in which we can manifest generosity and how we must cultivate a peace that we carry within us. Towards the end of the second period of zazen she asked to consider what we could do to project generosity there, upon the cushion, without speech or movement.
Metta came to my mind immediately, projecting loving-kindness and opening the heart. This called to mind to me the difficulty I have offering that back to myself. I thought about my pain, how I just work around it, let it be this dull, background noise accompanying the humming and drumming of my daily life. The physical pain particularly, but the emotional pain as well.
It had been a long day. The chair made me ache at the restaurant where we met to discuss the fund raising dinner around CB's new book, Mindful Eating. My stomach was a little upset and my back and hips ached, a spot in my right quadratus lumborum particularly so. Really, I just hoped the bell would ring soon so I could stretch out.
I took a moment and just thought about compassion for that spot that ached. I offered some sympathy to myself for the constant pain-noise, always somewhere in the back or hips. I acknowledged that it is tiring and hard to manage chronic pain. I didn't feel sorry for myself, just recognized the effort. Just focused on trying to be generous to myself.
The Risk to Blossom
Last night, while writing, I became aware of the the fatigue and eye strain I was feeling. I was seeing rainbow tracers across my vision, a whole arcing line of them. I went to bed feeling the effort of my yoga practice and heavy with the size of the change in my life.
This morning I woke up and my head ached from the sinuses, to my jaw, and wrapping around the base of the cranium. I got up, showered and headed in regardless. Under the fluorescent lights of the office it began to feel as though I'd been both hit in the face with shovel and as if the skin of my scalp was too small. Some ibuprofen at 11AM helped for about 30 minutes but by 12:10 I was about as bad as I'd been when I first got there. Finally I just went home and attempted writing some documentation instead of the code I'd been working on.
I am feeling a bit more scared today. Have had time to consider the enormity of the tasks at hand. I'm grateful to not have to try and get them all done in the next few weeks, but even working on them over the next months seems a little overwhelming. It is trying to figure out the details that feels like too much to manage.
I found myself considering a quote from Anais Nin today, "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”
Today I do not feel like I'm blossoming. I can certainly see that I was feeling the irritation at remaining with what is comfortable, safe, and has the trappings of societal approval -- in the bud, as it were. I don't know, perhaps all the pain of change, the pain of knowing, seeing, and admitting the truth, that is all the pain of blossoming.
I've not been known for my risk-taking. Even in my daring I was a cautious child. I would only sink into the thrill of something only after I'd assured myself that I'd be safe doing so, at least when it came to the physical world. I can recall not being so cautious with my emotional body, throwing myself into trying to be popular, talented and smart, but not ever really fitting in with those groups in school.
Woosh
Suddenly the world is changing again in big ways.
Really it hasn't stopped changing in years. In a way it is always changing, of course, but big changes. It seems like I really just started by wanting to improve my cholesterol level. At some point I became aware of not liking the way I interacted with people and just started being mindful of each person I interacted with.
Yoga practice started in 2003. Zen practice started in 2005. Big changes that have always felt subtle. I guess doing things the right way leaves a feeling of effortlessness. Life just moves along and I with it.
More pieces of who I thought I was are falling away again. Not bad, good really, but still hard work. I'm aware of the feeling of being exposed. Guess I'm getting used to it, slowly, as each bit of me is revealed. Consistent input that I'm accepted and safe helps, but it is just shaky. The "rails off" way of doing things, as CB would say.
I Am My Practice
Finally met CK's mother and step-father -- feeling hugely relieved that the anxiety of that first meeting is over and pleased to have had the chance to spend time with them. I felt a little more comfortable after spending the whole day to them. It also helped to have reassurance from CK that I was doing great, especially at those times when I felt like I was babbling.
It also wakes up a little of that awareness of just how much I do not fit in with, feel connected to, my own family. That awareness was still with me this morning when I read news from my Mom that she'd had an infection from her eye surgery and on Halloween slipped, falling on her back. I was aware of feeling both worried about her and weary of the constancy of her ill health.
On Sunday CK and I discussed sanzen, if it were to be offered while we were at Sunday service at Great Vow Zen Monastery. She had made an ango commitment to go to sanzen with HB at least once. I noted that at the monastery she would literally sit behind me in line and would be able to watch all the things to do that way.
So I found myself sitting before HB in the more formal sanzen room at GVZM. He blinked in surprise at me and I mentioned CK's visiting family. I talked to him about the shakiness right now, how my practice was leaving me aware of the ways in which I've not been fully honest with myself. At the same time I have feeling as though more and more of who I thought I was just falls away.
He asked who I am. At first I responded that I don't know. That is part of the anxiety I'm feeling right now, the shifting of who I thought I was. After a moment I looked up and said, "I am my practice." and he nodded at me.
Today was kind of tough, some painful truth. On top of a busy weekend with not enough sleep I find myself very tired tonight. All day while working on some Perl code my mind has pulled away reactions and moved closer to what hurt was not being addressed. As tough as it was I feel like I am working towards the truth again.
A little autumn haiku
What my mind came up with when I was trying to settle it into the silence of zazen at Great Vow Zen Monastery on Sunday, November 9, 2008.
Geese flying overhead.
Wild messengers calling out,
"Winter comes, prepare!"
Calm in Voice Despite Anxiety in Spirit
Last night was the first time HB told me I did a good job chanting for service after zazen. No reminder that I'm doing fine, to slow down. It wasn't the usual service I've been chanting either and HB had commented several times to me several times I needed to be stately in my chanting for the ango opening ceremony. He sent me to practice while people sat zazen!
I really never sat last night. During kinhin I let LM know I needed to chat with her to discuss the ringing of the bells. While I was going over that with her HB told us we had just a couple of minutes before he wanted to give a talk about ango at the end of zazen. As soon as I settled onto a seiza bench HB was talking. I tried to let his voice fade into the background so I could settle into my body, let my breath move around the knot of anxiety in my chest over chanting.
Afterwards HB gave me a thumbs up, a smile, and said, "Perfect".
I am just trying to stay with everything I'm feeling right now. There are these great moments -- the election, HB telling me I'd done a good job, Barry telling me twice how much he like my article, reading for SMART this morning -- all of these bright, positive things and the deep uncertainty I'm feeling right now.
Tonight in asana practice I was mindful of JW telling us as we started the teacher training program how for everyone that's done it stuff has come up. Every time she teaches things come up for her -- I can't imagine doing that! In the intensity of working, studying, teaching, taking asana practices, and going to teacher training classes I feel like I've pulled out thin again. Thin and taut enough that more falls away, things I kept saying I was comfortable with.
There is a part of me that is tired of this work, this endless unpacking of the great trunk of junk that makes up my coping mechanisms and PTSD. Disliking that learning how to help others, to teach better, to deepen my understanding of the Dhamra always seems to feel as though parts of me are pulled apart. I know that being sick the work is another form of resistence, although I think it is understandable that I will feel weary from the effort from time to time.
President Obama!
Truly a momentous evening.
I started to check returns at 3:30 (pacific) this afternoon, in earnest at 4:01. At 5:20 I was at home and had to stop checking to go teach my yoga class. At that time Obama had 77 electoral votes.
When I got home at 7:30PM, after teaching a class where I felt a little bit distracted, Obama had 207 electoral votes.
Sat watching returns steaming from CNN, checking NYTimes, CNN, and local news websites. AM and I just sat watching, forgetting to make dinner for a while. Getting up at one point to put a bottle of champagne in the freeze to get cold, fast.
When Obama gave his speech AM, DW and I opened the champagne out on the front porch. Around the neighborhood we could hear fireworks, champagne, and honking horns! Later I would read reports that over 150 people were in Pioneer Courthouse Square celebrating returns and the same number had taken over SE 39th and Hawthorne, banging pots and pans! The city is in celebration mode and is likely to remain so for days.
The champagne turned out to be a terrible. Wretched really. It required the addition of some frozen mango to get even near drinkable. I believe now that the bottle arrived in a floral arrangement that was a housewarming gift from my Mother.
The senate race is too close to call and I am too tired to keep checking results. I'll check first thing in the morning and see where we are at. It may take a day to really sort through all of the ballots.
I'm very saddened to see Proposition 8 passing in California. Not to mention other ballot measures passing to limit marriage and, in the case of Arkansas, adoption because of sexual orientation. Obama's win gives me hope that an administration that promotes tolerance, not to mention the Supreme Court appointments, will really change things in this country.
My Picture in a Zine
My article came out today in the Sangha newsletter, Ink on the Cat. It seemed a little strange to me to see myself there, printed, in black & white, looking out from something I could hold in my hands. I'm not sure if I've ever had my photograph next to something I wrote. When I think about it, the only time my photograph has been printed is in things like year books. Once or twice in small, local papers when I was a kid participating in a school or civic event.
In high school and college I had things I wrote show up in the school papers or literary zines. Mostly poetry, I wrote so much poetry throughout my teens and twenties. I moved onto just having a website and putting up my own poetry there when I was in my twenties. The poetry seemed to just stop showing up, years ago. It feels strange sometimes to not have poetry swimming around my head all the time. Once in a while something occurs to me, just in a flash and mostly whole. Haiku shows up in those flashes.
At times it feels like the PTSD burned through that language. When the anxiety caused by it is at a peak it feels like I am entirely cut off from any ability to think coherently, much less communicate. Being able to get any words out is a physical fight. In finally naming what left me feeling like I was broken and trying to work on it, the words no longer arrive in the spare beauty of poetry.
And yet on all sides I am being encouraged to write. My Zen teachers and community, my Hatha yoga teacher, my loved-ones, and co-workers. Tell the story of my weight loss, my realizations about myself as I study yoga, coming to a place of peace. All of is why I write a blog, trying to come up with some practice that would help me figure out how to tell whatever story decides to come up.
I feel a little at a loss as to where to start. Really all of those stories are the whole story. The free-fall of personality I experienced, was because of my weight loss. That loss of my carefully constructed personae that I defined as me left behind the stark reality of my PTSD. Peeling back the layers of the trauma leads me inexorably back to my childhood. The way out of all of these things has been the yoga and Zen practice.
I feel a sick fear at my Mother finding out what I've written and still managing to punish, humiliate, or at the very least make me feel guilty for embarrassing the family. There's a voice that says that I should wait until she is dead to write about her. I guess I feel like I don't know how to write this story because I'm still living it and most of the time lately I feel like I have no voice of accomplishment to speak from.
Yet here is my picture, printed in the newsletter next to my words. Someone from the Sangha has already emailed a compliment to me on my words, adding their voice to both CK and AM's.
Craving Sweets
I'm craving sweet things tonight. Chocolate, cookies.... Even the ads for sweet, non-vegan, overly processed things on the television look good! I had some more yams and broccoli with some slightly sweet, Thai-style peanut sauce (thin kind), which addressed the craving a little. I'm guessing I'm still feeling the major sugar-fest of Halloween and Diwali. So many yummy treats from Sweet Pea, so much sugar!
I am more aware now of the cravings, more mindful about them. Before I just indulged them when ever they came up. Really I know the cravings were more emotional based, just wanting satisfying things to eat because I was unsatisfied with my life. It isn't that I don't feel that kind of craving from time to time, I just am more aware of it, much more able to say to myself what my body needs as opposed to what my mind is clamoring for.
One thing that has changed about it is the ability to notice how the body does crave sugar, above and beyond the mind wanting to be satisfied with something sweet. Whenever there's a few days in a row where I have sweets I find myself feeling my body craving them.