body, heart and mind

Where did I live my mind, body or both? A question asked by the Week Of Inward Looking started by Susan Piver  and Patti Digh.  It is an exercise looking at the past year with 7 thought leaders, 7 questions in 7 days.  The whole question was actually:

Where have I learned and lived in 2012? In my head, in my body, or both? What would living more fully in my body in 2013 bring to me? How can I embody life and learning as I move through this liminal space between now and next? How can I more fully learn from the neck down in 2013

Ok, so I am a thinker and I love to think.  I even think about thinking with regular glee.  I have never felt comfortable in my own skin, and have always existed in my head.  I am clumsy, inflexible with almost no athletic talent at all and avoid looking or thinking about this strange vessel that carries me around.  The other day I was at yoga and looking at my feet.  I thought to myself - how long has it been since I actually looked at my feet? The key part of that sentence though is actually that I was at a yoga class.  I have started to see the mind, body and heart connection.  I add the heart to the body because I have realized that being physically engaged with yourself actually helps feel open with other people - at least for me.  Perhaps it is just unlocking myself from the mind cave and realizing that my thoughts are not all that defines me.

I am terrible body landlord.  I have fought tooth and nail to not know about its existence and necessity and berate myself for my body being incompetent and incapable.  It would break my heart to hear anyone talk to another human being the way I talk to myself and especially when talking about my body.  The divide between myself is like an epic battle that only I can see happening, imaginary friends at war.  I really want to be a total yogini: Skinny, Flexible, Graceful, Strong.  I also do not want to be anything like that as I am terrified of the embarrassment, pain and shame of trying to get from where I am to anywhere near "yogini-ness."  My mind has wrapped a tight little cocoon of safety around me that the idea of failure or physical exhaustion or pain would be the end - my demise.  My mind wooes me with wine, food, pajamas, and everything that keeps me safe, warm and protected.

However there have been moments, where I have seen the light through the thick cocoon.  While I wobbled, struggled to keep up, sweat, swore, and managed to not just run out of the room screaming, I have survived to live another day. More powerful than the fact that I did not spontaneously combust upon first sign of failure or get ejected out of the room with everyone laughing at me, it the feeling afterwards when success or failure it is done.  Afterwards my heart feels full, elated and alive and that can sometimes feels just as scary as the fear of failure.  Too elated, too hyped up, wow I am going to be so awesome - I go from not dying right into an intense overdrive of rockstar mode.  I move the bar of survivable failure so I am destined to keep struggling to just believe I can do it.  My mind is a dirty fighter as I am sure that is against the rules, I should be thrilled about the progress I make but instead I feel disgusted that I am not a master and never will be.  My heart shrinks back, my fear takes over and I have run away from the potential of a cease fire and a life outside the cocoon.

This year was particularly one that was owned by my mind.  While I have fought with this yo-yo affect my whole life I feel like through my meditation practice I have a language around what is happening.  I have to take this new found awareness sprinkle in some intention, wisdom and compassion and find myself a way to just be who I am - body, heart and mind.

Finding my heart

Always a struggle for me to write, perhaps someday it will become more fluid and not so arduous and scary to start.  As I read comments on articles and posts and see how judgmental and cruel people can be it makes this whole public blog thing much more difficult.  Why do I have a public blog and not private one?  I tell myself that no one is really reading this and I am pretty uninteresting so it will not really matter to anyone out there.  I also pretend it is about technology and the ability to develop my own voice but I could do all that and not publish a single post.  There is something about making the decision to put words and thoughts out there that is both frightening and curious.  There is something about opening and sharing with the world at play with all of this.

Artist Thomas Sheridan

This weekend I went to an incredible yoga program The Intention of the Heart Practice for the Spiritual Warrior with Amy Sullivan.  I am disappointed I did not go to the Fire part of the program because I can only imagine how powerful the two days together would have been. It was a beautifully lead afternoon that had us connect with our heart and thinking about our intentions using the body and journaling.   Right now, I am all about trying to get to my heart and set intentions that are true to me instead of just required or goals.  What is an intention versus a goal?  For me, the difference is the heart and the outcome.  I have spent year after year setting goals to accomplish for the next year.  Marathon, Learn to Swim, Open Water swimming, all checks.  I push myself each year to do something that is hard or will make me a "better" person.  This person is never enough and needs to keep growing and accomplishing.  This year I started with many goals but I lost the passion for them.  I could not see the point of accomplishing these things that in the end do not matter to anyone but me and I did not really care.  Nihilism was running rampant in my mind and my life.

However this year I did do a few things that were kind of out of character for me.  I signed up for both an IDP Teacher training and Stanford Compassion teacher training with absolutely no idea what would become of it. An activity with no known goal.  I have nothing in my current life that can absorb those things easily but yet I felt compelled to do it.  It has been hard because I feel so out of place compared to my fellow students.  (Compared is a big problem in that sentence but I am working on that too.)  IDP program changed my life, but was not an easy peasy change that suddenly made everything better.  It made me aware of my nihilism, aware of my heart, aware of a strong desire in me to live a meaningful life.  All that awareness is actually crazy painful because there is no longer the ability to be numb without knowing I am trying to numb myself.  It is so difficult to crave human connection and the ability to share my heart with others and that they are open-hearted with me.  Vulnerable.  Exposed.  Longing.  Now - all I have is now.

The questions in my head for 2013 are

Who do I want to be in this world?
What type of communication and intimacy do I want in my life?
What can I do to make this a better world?
How do I spend my time to live a life that fulfills my intention?
How can I face my demons and keep my intention strong?

They are big questions but I have one life and each moment of time is an opportunity to relieve suffering and bring peace and joy to the world.

That is how the light gets in

I want to write which I think is why this is so hard to do.  I have been unable to be with myself ...just in the space of being...for some time now.  I have been so afraid to exist, afraid of my very existence, so much so that most nights I have drank myself to sleep to run from the fear of what might happen if -- not sure what the if was but terrifying all the same.  There was no relief to be had and every night led to more anxiety that I would somehow perish if I ever felt what was below the surface - if the wall fell down...so would I.  Tonight some how there was a crack in the pain and some light found its way into my heart and here I sit sober with myself breathing in the anxiety, the fear and the joy of living all at the same time.  I have hope I can find my way back in my own life.

As I have been thinking about my engagement of my own life, I have used the analogy of a movie.  I am one of those that hides their eyes in fear and cries when my heart strings have been tugged, basically I lose track of the fact that it is a story that has been carefully scripted and edited and fall into the storyline completely and with total abandon.  I am more comfortable losing myself in a movie than I am in my own life.  I try so desperately to block and numb the feelings that I have in response to real things in my life dressing them down and deeming them unworthy.  I have been running hard and fast from my feelings my whole life which is exhausting and cruel to my very being.  I wonder how it all spun out of control and I realized it started as a low moan of angst about the meaning of my life and turned into a screaming wail when my father destroyed his own life and then killed himself. The walls that I felt I had to erect to stay alive were soul crushing.  In matters of moments of a few breaths I became lost to myself and my life as I was ill  prepared to deal with the level of strong emotions and despair.  

Tonight I had an opportunity to share time with my sons and their girlfriends and I saw that they radiated joy.  Their lives are not perfect and will not always be happy but they know joy and for that I am thankful as it is a real blessing.  We saw a movie tonight and it was gorgeous, full of passion and adventure and there were definitely moments where I was swept away.  However tonight there were also a few moments where I revelled in the world that was able to be created so magically in this film.  A story with heart and heros, courage and fear and for a moment I could see the world and my own life as just as magical.  I thought about the pain and suffering I am feeling and realized I have felt this type of pain before if not more so, what could have changed and why now was it so devastating   The thing they do not warn you about when you delve into meditation is that once you have awareness and your heart starts to open to the interconnectedness of the world, you cannot go back.  You are left vulnerable where the old patterns and walls feel more like prison than they do salvation.  I know my life must have meaning beyond the numbness and heartless world.  I know I must help others in the world to be free from their suffering just like me we all want joy and peace.  All any of us can do is to try each moment of each day.

Courage to be....maybe

The glory of the internet is to be able to turn over stones that before were unavailable, inaccessible, unrealizable before and with a single search and a few clicks there you are.  Staring at pictures from the family that discarded you, found you unacceptable, and told you to stay away. They look so happy, in fact, they look like an incredibly normal family.  My brother looks like my father and my mother looks so much the same even though it has been over 20 years since I laid eyes on her.  My father has been gone for a year and I was not even mentioned on his obituary as part of the family, which is right because I was disowned and removed from the family so long ago.  For a few minutes, I cannot breathe.  There is a moment of clarity and awareness that feels as unreal as it does true;  everything I work so hard to do is for them and everything I run from is running from them.  While that specifically may not be true, I can feel that my heart that has never survived the trauma of my childhood.  Fragile and wounded, I came to that family damaged and they did not understand what they had taken on and created deeper wounds of rejection and fear and nothing ever healed.  I have always been proud of how I have survived the insanity in my life and at this very moment I realize survival is not living life.

In the wake of my biological father's horrendous death, I am faced to force that the demons that we have inside us must be healed or they will continue to haunt and taint the life that we try to live.  Faced with normalcy and a seemingly happy future, he felt compelled to destroy his life and leave himself with no choices but to take his own life.  Am I really living any differently?  The destruction I lay upon myself is self-hatred and doubt, unworthiness and an emotionally stunted heart and relationships.  I spent so many years surviving, fighting for my life that in the wake of the new solitude and the emptiness I am lost.   I named this blog Courage to Be and I am still struggling to find the courage and the heart to really live.  I am not sure what it even really means to look beyond the limited and find the spacious luminosity of life.

I have depended on self-reliant untouchable strong me that I loath and continually am disappointed in for so long that I am starting to think that this self definition of myself is the thing I have to let go.  The wounds are kept alive by the solidification of the need to stay deeply protected and the fear of what lies beyond.  I have to let that me retire from vigilance and protection and then what? Open up - open up to what?  What the hell is the point of life beyond surviving?    What do you do with the space and emptiness?  How can I let go of the me I think I am and let myself be the me I am?  What if real me comes out and it is an even worse version of myself than I have imagined.  If I do not meet my demons at the door, will they take over my life and destroy everything I have because I can not move forward?  What if there is no heart, no courage, even worse what it there is nothing to who I am other than just survival jane mode?  I am so afraid and yet I feel like maybe there is hope a glimmer of love?  Can I re-engage with my life that is not about necessity and is about living?  What does that even mean?

My Girl

There is something between my brain and words being written down that changes the tone, the space even my perceived brilliance of my thoughts.  It has been almost a year since I last wrote in this blog, I even started another one but continued to get lost between my thoughts and the typing.  It is time to renew the effort once again.  The first of these will be difficult, rusty, awkward to produce and there will be no room for grammar or correct sentences just a reopening of my self to myself.   

Reading a page from my childhood journal or an entry the last year of this blog and I am haunted by the ghost of unrealized intention.  I am struck by the same themes over and over again without any new insight and progress.  As my life has evolved I find myself obsessed with the same base desires: eating better, losing weight, exercise, creativity; freedom from the me I do not want to be.  Over the last year I have been looking at the gap between feeling and doing and I realize that I have not delved deeper to understand what is the core fear and part of me that both wants these changes and yet cannot commit to them.  There must be something below the surface of my mind - my self - that is heavily vested in keeping me in this hamster wheel of suffering of wanting and failing.  Is there a part of me struggling for its life - fearing annihilation - if I move beyond the me that fails that struggles that desires to break free?  Is there a part of me that has no desire to be anything other than what I am?  Why of all the things in this world to want and desire have these simple things been the focus of my emotional distress? 

What does that freedom from this vicious circle look like?  Can I imagine a me that is not beating herself up about eating right, or cringing at every picture because I am so overweight after all these years of the same brutality?  What about a me that has enough space that a creativity creeps into my world allowing me to share with the world more of me?  What about a me that is free from the shame and disgust in my inability to move forward?  Can I be kind to myself and still not abuse myself? Well this is the journey that I am embarking on.. to realize that the me right now is all I have and the decision the moments in this day - not the last or not the future but this day is all that I am.  

Time to learn how to fall in love with myself.

being here

My heart is shaky and my mind is cruel.  I am lost within my own construct of confusion, pain and disappointment.  Losing steam or interest or care for where I go next.  Lost not wanting to be found.  This is all in my mind.  None of it real.  and yet I feel weighed down and caught in this web and despair.  Breathe.  Breathe.  Another moment passes.  Breathe Breathe. Right now notice the cool breeze from the window.  The sun shining in my eye.  The cat perched watching me watch him.  This is the reality.  Still here.   Breathe.  Breathe.  Tears stuck inside me.  Anger lost its voice and is swallowed whole into the hollowness.  Breathe.  I can feel my heel pressed against the table, my back sunk into the couch.  I hear the cars drive by the house.  I do not feel here.  I am here but lost to the now.  Breathe damn it Breathe. Feel the warmth of the sunbeam on my leg.  Stop screaming.  My thoughts are empty and yet pregnant with guilt and frustration.  breathe.  please just breathe.  for a moment or two I am here.  for a moment or two I see what I do to myself.  the rest of the time I am too busy trying to survive.  breathe.  breathe.

Another proclamation of motivation

January 2, 2012.  It feels like the future as I remember Y2K like it was yesterday and was 12 years ago.  My sons are both adults (well sort of) and my life has really transformed from where I was and where I am now.  Time is a really strange thing - some days seems to crawl by and yet years are flying.   I am trying to come into this year fully aware and not making excuses.

I have stopped drinking.  I do not think I am an alcoholic in the true sense of the word, but I do use alcohol to avoid the things I really need and want to do.  Want is a strong word as I don't really want to exercise and eat right.  I really want to eat whatever the hell I want and never lift my ass of the couch, but I don't want to have a muffin top and thigh burn.  Funny I have to do something I dont want to do either way and I would rather not be disgusted with myself.   Alcohol lets me eat more and exercise less and drown the guilt away of both.  So in a sense I am an alcoholic because I am using it against myself.   I wish I could drink once in a while but it is like the exercise thing - the day I miss one day - is the day I never start up again.  There is something crazy about me that will just hold on to the failure and keep the streak going rather than rise up and start again.

If you have known me or read my blog or anything I have written in the last 10 years - these are not really new thoughts.  The desire to break out of bad patterns has been there since - well since I able to reflect on myself.  I have see-saw'd on weight and motivation my whole life  Sometimes I am successful and then I just erode at my success until I am so far gone I have to punch myself in the face to get back somewhere in the middle.  This is the year of the punch in the face.  I am working on my Shambhala Warrior Path program, applied to the IDP Meditation Facilitator training, looking at getting started on a master's degree in counseling, volunteering more - maybe a big sister or another program.  This is the year without a doubt that I will reclaim my true focus and goals.  2011 was disappointing.  I got no where fast.  I don't want to walk into another year feeling this way.  Now I just have to keep the energy and motivation up.