The ocean

Last night I had a really fun date with "the kisser" as he is known to my friends.  We've moved beyond that and it feels so good to have human contact again.

This morning though, I woke up feeling very blue and I thought I was getting sick.  I think it's just my allergies acting up.  I did my usual morning readings and meditation and still, I couldn't shake the anxiety and feeling of dread.  It's not quite gone, but as always, I found a reading that really helped me.

This is from "The Wisdom of a Broken Heart" by Susan Piver.  

"A lot of people believe by thinking positively and expecting good things to happen, you can make good things happen.  Recently, I spoke to my friend Stephen Mitchell, an internationally respected translator of the world's great wisdom texts, including the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, and the book of Job, about this subject.  I asked if in his lifelong study of the core teachings of all religions, he'd ever come across that idea.  I wrote down what he said because it was so excellent. Here it is:

'The teaching of every one of the great sacred texts is that control is an illusion.  When you understand that ultimately you are not the doer, you can step back from yourself.  That is the only path to serenity.  In other words, letting go of the illusion of control, and realizing that you never had control in the first place, allows you to live in the most dazzlingly intelligent, beautiful and kind reality that you could have ever imagined -- and beyond what you could have imagined.'

When I can relax enough, I see that, just like me, everyone -- regular people, great superstars, and profound sages -- probably all started out worrying that the world was going to eat them alive or that they simply weren't lovable enough.  We are all just looking for some kind of happiness.  Sometimes things work out for us, and sometimes they don't.  It really doesn't matter.  Eventually, all our hopes and fears are going to dissolve, and at the end of our lives, according to all the deathbed reports we've ever received, the only thing that will matter is how loving and brave we've been.

All those dying people can't be wrong when they say that all the things you want and all the things you dread are just like waves in the ocean.  Eventually they just become reabsorbed into the vast play of the sea.  And you know what?  The ocean doesn't care.  It never gives up.  It can accommodate it all, gentle waves that lap the shore and those that roil up ferociously, tiny tidal pools and great, freezing depths.  The real secret, the great ones say, is that we are much more like the ocean than the waves.  Underneath all our hopes and fears is profound stillness and the memory of how to return to it."

When I read that, it didn't eliminate my allergies or make me feel ecstatic, but I was reminded that my work here on this earth is to be loving and brave and I have to give myself high marks for that. 

The long dark night

Someday I am going to look back at this period of my life and remember it fondly, for it is a time of intense emotional growth and feeling very alive.  But right now, living it is not so exciting.  

Today I'm going with my loftmate Abigail for the weekend to see her son graduate from Colgate and to visit with a dear old friend in Ithaca.  Right now I'm having a hard time getting out of bed.  I picked up "The Wisdom of a Broken Heart" by Susan Piver and the chapter I'm on is: "It is a Dark Night."  


"Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.
How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),
a bitter place!  Death, could scarce be bitterer.
But if I would show the good that came of it
I must talk about things other than the good."


- Dante, Inferno, Canto 1 (Translation: Mark Musa)




I'm grateful to Esther, who I met at Friends In Deed, who suggested that I read this book.
So many friends along this journey have pointed me in the direction I needed to go.
How do I thank them all?  


My daughter is the one I need to thank most of all, for her love.  I hope she knows how proud of her I am.

Back from Miami

I don't know what to say about where I am other than back from a weekend in Miami, working at a Mama Gena mastery, which was amazing, as always.  I swam in the ocean and danced and had a wonderful, although challenging, weekend with over a hundred women on an incredible journey of self-discovery, sisterhood and empowerment.  When I returned, I started reading "The Wisdom of a Broken Heart."  

It's cold and rainy in New York today and I am struggling to get out of bed and start my day.  Last night I ran into a neighbor who went through a divorce five years ago.  He said the first couple of years were horrible and now he's doing really quite well.  "The Wisdom of a Broken Heart" talks about the difference between sadness and depression.  I'm sad that ending this marriage is so painful and I wish it could be resolved more easily without the drama and the sadness.

The book quotes another Buddhist writer, Chogyam Trungpa, who wrote:

"This experience of sadness and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness.  Conventionally, being fearless means that you are not afraid or that if someone hits you, you will hit him back....(But) real fearlessness is the product of tenderness.  It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart.  You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world.....If a person does not feel alone and sad, he cannot be a (spiritual) warrior at all..."

I like this book.  I'm grateful for the feelings.  This year has been the hardest year of my life and also the best.  I'm not afraid to feel.  I accept where I am, even when I have trouble getting out of bed.  I wouldn't say I am fearless, but I am getting more at home with all the feelings that I have.  This past Mother's Day was the first one in my life without my mother.  It was good to be in Miami, with my women friends, swimming in the ocean. My mother would have approved.  


Well, actually she might not have, but that's one of the perks of her no longer being alive.  I can do whatever I want on Mother's Day or any other day.  

One of the highlights of Miami was having the chance to break a wooden board with my fist.  I was afraid I couldn't do it, but I faced my fears and broke it into three parts.  It was fantastic!