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Archive for ‘Enlightenment’

Speed Bumps

November 25th, 2008

I fear being on the bridge I commute over if an earthquake comes up out of nowhere. I’ve seen movies of the Golden Gate Bridge during an earthquake and the waviness and buckling that happened to the roadbed give me cold chills. Sometimes that happens in my life and then I have to stop the motor and wait it out or just gun it and hope I get to the other side in one piece. This morning I set aside 30 minutes to meditate, picked a good chair, put on the guided meditation cd, sat down and fell apart. I couldn’t keep my mind on my breathing. The more I tried to focus on meditating, the more my pulse speeded up. Instead of being here and now, my mind was racing around the room touching base on grocery lists, recipes, the face of an old love, the smell of a tweed jacket in the rain (my face pressed against it in a goodbye), a scene from a tv show, wondering if I’d have time for coffee, the tick of the clock–click, click, click–my dead grandfather, that snowstorm in 1967, the woodpecker in the dead tree, a sudden urge to get up and bleach my teeth…all bid for my attention. For 30 minutes, I twitched and tried to get more comfortable, felt like my breathing was fake and forced and worried about how fat my stomach was. By the time the chimes went off and 30 minutes was up, I was so agitated that meditating had probably raised my blood pressure. But in some ways it was one of the best sessions I’ve had because it forced me to recognize that neither life nor meditation is always going my way. That when things aren’t working according to my plan, just sitting still for 30 minutes is all I can expect of myself and it might turn out to be a major victory.

Posted in Enlightenment, Senses | 5 Comments »

Dear Buddha

July 31st, 2008

My impromptu altars include Buddhas, Mexican candles, tchotkes, trinkets, family photos and random glitter. I like to think it reflects the heart of a seeker, but I suspect it’s more the collection of a magpie or gadfly. I have a friend who keeps kosher, a few who seem to be devout Christian (sort of) and a lot of free-floating spirits who embrace some vague Spirituality that combines Buddhism, goddess worship, the Black Madonna and yoga. I just don’t get any of it. It’s as if the religious vaccination I received as a child failed to take, and I don’t have the same emotional and psychic protection that my friends do. I was brought up to believe, to follow, to fall into line, and yet…I don’t. But I still pray … to Buddha, El Senor (as they called God in a Mexican church I once attended), my dead mother, the Great Whoever. For the people I love, for sleeping and waking, for an available parking space, for love, for rescue, for rain, for someone to be listening.

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I’m Celebrating

April 28th, 2008

No, I didn’t get invited to be on Oprah…thank god, because I can’t get in any Oprah-worthy clothes yet. No, I didn’t get a book contract. No, I didn’t wear a happy face all day at work as I promised myself I’d do (tomorrow, I swear!). I’m just celebrating the small victories and gentle blessings of this one and only Monday, April 28, 2008.

1. I meditated for 15 minutes and managed to slow my breathing down enough to offset the accumulated stress from a day at work. I have a biofeedback device that is a soul trainer versus a body trainer. Instead of urging me to go faster, harder, stronger, it simply lullabies me into breathing slower, gentler, healthier.

2. It’s raining as I write this, water filling the streets, dripping off the new leaves of the banana tree outside the kitchen window, providing one of my favorite soundtracks in the big blue universe. My idea of a great vacation is to be in a swank hotel with stacks of books, room service, and rainstorms that prevent me from sightseeing for a week.

3. I lost the Sephora gift card I’d been saving since Christmas and finally found THE perfect item to spend it on, and I didn’t go into a frantic, I’ll-rip-the-roof-off-this-house rampage looking for it. I just offered it up to the universe and forgave myself for losing it. Okay, I’ll admit I dumped out my purse on the floor and kicked the contents around when I couldn’t find the card, but hey, I quickly regained control (although I will miss that tube of mascara I stomped on).

In case I sound disgustingly well-adjusted emotionally and morally and spiritually, I have to add the disclaimer that I had to have a glass of wine before I could find some reasons to celebrate. And the breathing helped, too. I envy people who find their true north, their steady compass setting when they’re young and then seem so…finished. I still struggle to maintain balance. I search for a guru, read between the lines, look for enlightenment, start over every day. Will I ever become a better person? An old soul? A steady rock for others around me? I’m embarrassed to have so many more questions than answers as I get older.

Posted in Enlightenment, Nowness | 1 Comment »

The Open Road

April 26th, 2008

Last Wednesday, I had to give a speech to 150 people about taking risks. I was so nervous I had to start seeing a shrink again, and I didn’t get the final version finished til the day before. Then on Thursday, I had an emergency root canal, and yesterday I accidentally melted the monitor on my laptop with a halogen lamp. It should have been a terrible week, but I was so elated to have the speech done that the rest of it was just a shrug. I’ve been dreading giving that speech for months and months, ever since I agreed to do it. In my mind, it was like a giant boulder blocking my life path. I literally couldn’t make a plan for anything without thinking of it as pre- or post-speech. My fear kept me from starting to write it, my fear kept me from figuring out what I’d say, my fear ruined many hours by filling them with anticipation anxiety. As it turned out, the speech went beautifully. The audience seemed to love it, and my self confidence rocketed. I didn’t forget anything, I had great notes, and I had rehearsed it a gazillion times out loud beforehand–something I’d never done in the past. There are enough roadblocks that other people and random circumstances put in my path without giving them a helping hand. I need to stop creating drama trauma for my pysche. Here’s one remedy…start asking myself every Sunday what I’m looking forward in the coming week instead of what I’m dreading. I want to set out on Mondays like Walt Whitman…

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

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Whan that Aprille..

April 20th, 2008

…with his shoures soote

The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye

(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…

I love the rhythms and the word picture painted by the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and I wish I weren’t too lazy to be a pilgrim. I don’t want to join a church or go to potluck dinners or recite the Nicene Creed. I don’t want to elect someone President based on their faith and values and I don’t want to listen to Christian rock and I don’t want to get drafted into anyone’s holy war. I don’t think God is on my side because I’m an American and I wonder about someone who is the only survivor of some catastrophe and says it was because God was watching over them. Why wasn’t he watching over the people who died? It’s never made sense to me. I just want to find that still center that T.S. Eliot wrote about. But still I hang up Tibetan prayer flags and replace them as they wear out and absolutely believe that the wind blows through them and carries blessings near and far. I was raised as a Methodist in Kentucky, became an Episcopalian in the 70s, dropped out of church, went back to church, starting getting pissed off in church, and finally just quit church. Now I wander without direction … no guru, no god, no Good Book, just some fragile hopes.

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City Mouse, Country Mouse

March 17th, 2008

I want to wake up and walk out my door to coffee shop on the corner. I want to drop off my dry cleaning on my way to the subway or tube stop. I want to have a book store and a movie theater in my neighborhood. I want to sit in a local bar and have a glass of wine and write in my journal. I want to know the bartender’s name and have a bowl of mussels with butter and herbs in broth. I want to wear black and high heels and fake pearls. On the other hand, I want to own a farm in Kentucky, grow limestone lettuce, adopt a dog and let him run and hunt, listen to rain on a tin roof, raise chickens, drive a pickup truck, sit on the porch at the end of the day, sleep like a baby in a four poster bed that belonged to my grandmother. Except those two sides of my self will never be fully reconciled and I live in the between spaces. Maybe I need to choose.

Posted in Enlightenment, Home | 3 Comments »

Blue Heeler Blues

February 19th, 2008

This is Jack sitting on the porch waiting for my daughter to come home. I wonder what goes through his mind…”she left me again she might not come back this time i’ll be alone who will feed me i love the way she smells i wonder if that’s her car i’m not moving until she comes home unless that other woman gives me a rawhide.” Don’t we all spend some metaphorical time sitting on a porch waiting for someone to come home? Someone who will have all the answers, who will take care of us, who will turn on that soul switch when they walk in the door. Jack’s needs/wants are so close to the surface. Most of us spend our lives practicing how to hide those feelings, because we think we’re the only ones who have them. Lucky Jack — he never learned how to save face or look cool.

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I Want a Phototropic Soul

February 18th, 2008

I committed to a friend last week that I would start meditating every day. And the next day I forgot to meditate. I want to be on a spiritual quest, but my soul is so lazy it needs a sherpa to carry it to a higher altitude. I’ve been reading about people who will endure anything to summit Mt. Everest–frostbite, delirium, death–and I wonder why I don’t have that same drive to attain a higher consciousness. Shouldn’t my soul automatically seek enlightenment in the same way a sunflower follows the light?

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Close Encounters of Three Kinds

January 30th, 2008

The gold Buddha shares my necklace with a brass tag from the Tate Modern in London. It’s by the sculptor Louise Bourgeois and it says, “Art is a guaranty of sanity.” The friend who sent it knows it would be a powerful amulet for me. I was wearing it tonight:

…when I had coffee with a doctor friend who relieves pain, grows tomatoes, saves old trees, loves music, makes electric eye contact, steps lightly on the earth, detests pretension, gives hugs that don’t withhold.

…when I ate dinner with my artist friend who doesn’t confuse his soul with his ego, is too generous, shares my grasshopper sensibility, volunteers for hospice, can’t say no to friends, has an unerring eye, gives himself too little credit, doesn’t realize his own worth.

…when a very very rich man passed our table without a glance. Either he didn’t recognize me or didn’t want to recognize me. He was with a beautiful young woman, and he was silverhaired and power bluesuited and surrounded by a safe green zone of bullet-proof investments. It was like seeing God walk by and I couldn’t imagine what we had talked about during that one awkward blind-date lunch we shared. What do you say to God when he is talking about taking a golf trip around the world’s most famous courses and you haven’t even been to Paris? And you have a tattoo that suddenly seems trashy and your clothes don’t fit right and you wish you had never left Kentucky.

But as he walked out the door, I remembered that “Art is a guaranty of sanity.” And money isn’t. And I would hate golfing around the world when Paris is waiting.

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Carry-on Baggage

January 29th, 2008

When I was very very young, my mother used to put me on a train to visit my grandparents in the country, a hundred miles away from our town. She pinned a tag to my shirt with my name and destination written on it and asked the conductor to keep an eye on me. I can’t remember feeling afraid or unsafe or worried about psycho child molesters or getting lost or not being met at the station. Traveling as an adult is much more fraught. My carry-on baggage includes fear of taking off, fear of mid-air collisions, fear of landing, fear of super bugs and bed bugs. Put a tag on my fear of failure because it slows me down. Tag my self-doubt because it weighs on me more than the extra books and shoes I’m always dragging on trips. Tag my envy of the bright young book editor I met today who was wearing 3-inch high heels, an Audrey-Hepburnish black coat and cheap-chic accessories that on me would have just looked cheap. Add to that mix some setbacks that came bam bam bam, all at once, and the emotional baggage on my flight from New York tonight should have been over the weight limit. But instead of obsessing on what had gone wrong, I realized that I felt more free than I had in months, because my fear of failure has kept me from being free to fail. I’d always given a nod to that self-help concept, but I suddenly “got it” in a visceral way. If I can let go of the rigid, yet small, expectations I’ve had for myself lately, maybe some more exciting alternatives might appear. Or maybe not–but I need to hold onto the certainty I’m feeling right now that the unpredictability will be worth the risk.

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