Patience or Apathy?

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Be serene in the oneness of things
and erroneous views
will disappear by themselves.
--Seng-ts'an

Perhaps the greatest challenge, once fully awake, is to drop all reaching and simply open like a clam waiting in the deep until life in all its guises floods through the half-closed center that is us.

As a younger person, (and certainly as a little girl), I used to have all of these 'plans' and things – often nothing earth shattering, just... I would go through life saying, for example, ...and tomorrow, such and such will happened, and then after that we'll... and then on Friday, and on the weekend we'll... and so on... and I would go after these things – actively pursue these things that were, in my view of the future, dead certainties to happen...

Imagine my youthful surprise and disappointment on the occasions those things didn't happen. And as a younger person, I dealt even less well with disappointment than I do as an adult. I would get horribly emotional, temper tantrums all around and just get very hurt. As a defence I learned to stop. Stop planning; stop imagining... stop pursuing.... Learn patience.

I learned there was only so much I could do. That once I had done my part to set in motion the things that I was hoping for (unless 'my part' was one of those ongoing things, like study – work... etc), that all I could do was wait – like waiting for a seed I had planted to grow. It wasn't easy to learn such patience... but I had thought that I had done so really well...

Until I came to realise that sometimes, this patience, this sense of the 'dropping of reaching' was being perceived as apathy – that sometimes, people would interpret my waiting as 'not caring.' Then I started to worry...and in being troubled, the patience I had worked so hard to cultivate fractured and I became brittle and bad tempered in my waiting; miserable and mardy if things do not go my way... and I don't like that aspect of me, because it makes me selfish. It makes me focus only on me.

What I need to do is to find a balance between patience and action; between waiting and reaching, between knowing that it's okay to give someone a gentle prod every now and then, or query if they are ready for x or y, instead of waiting for some kind of sign that they are, so that what was said, is done in timely fashion.

I need this because I don't like being told that I don't care when I do. I don't like to be interpreted as not wanting to do something, when I do and was just waiting for the right moment. What started as a defence or strategy against a part of me that was ultimately self destructive, has become a kind of self harm in and of itself... in which case surely it's time to find another way. Only thing is: I don't know any other way.

Feeling Deeply

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Not to feel is to stop the heart from
breathing.

For to feel deeply and precisely with full awareness is what opens us to both joy and sorrow. It is the capacity to feel keenly that reveals the meaning in our experiences.

Feeling is different to expressing. I'm told recently that I 'never smile any more,' and aside from the fact that it worries me that people I love are perceiving that I'm unhappy all that time – which I'm not, not by any stretch of the imagination – it makes me thing about how I find it hard to express that I am happy – contented.

My face doesn't do well with smiles... I don't like my teeth for starters, and when I smile, it often looks more like a grimace than an actual smile, just because of the way my face is put together... or I look or squinty eyed or something. I have a real problem with my self-image of a smile. I have a serious face and I can't help that... but just because I'm not grinning like a fool, doesn't mean I'm miserable.

There are of course exceptions to this, like anything else. Sometimes I will just grin, for no other reason than I'm contented and/or happy. And then of course I get asked what I'm grinning at. I can't win. LOL

But I feel... and I feel deeply a huge range of emotions often within the span of a second or two... even when I don't express what I'm feeling, I'm still feeling.

When we went to Biltmore for our anniversary pictures, walking at Mir's side, dressed as we were on our wedding day, just being there together, walking the gardens – sharing in watching the squirrels fighting to get apples up to the tree, feeling loved, and cherished, and wanted... feeling confident and beautiful, and strong... giving love, sharing a sense of peace together, all of these things combined in me to a deep and profound happiness. Yes the rain fell a little bit to begin with, things were wet and muddy a little bit, but that didn't matter, all that mattered was the love and happiness that we were sharing. The silly moments, the happy moments, the moments of falling down mole or gopher holes... it was all just perfect. I couldn't have hoped or wished for a better day, a day that began with the rain and ended in sunshine, but was all 'smiles' – whether those smiles were actual or just the feelings of them inside of me, they were there. Little things, like tying Mir's tie... playing around with the cake knife... walking hand in hand... snuggling unselfconsciously... the 'monkey kiss'... telling stories of the actual day... all just – a perfect day.

When Planting... Plant.

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

The inward battle-against our mind, our
wounds, and the residues of the past-is more
terrible than outward battle.
--Swami Sivananda

...let your inner and outer attention go in the same direction.

There was a question the other day, on the 'wii vote' channel, that asked if life was simpler now, or in the past – something like that. The answer was obvious to me... that things were simpler in the past.

Now there are so many pressures, to get so much done... to do things in a certain way, to focus on so many things at once that nothing really gets done to any satisfactory level – if at all. We all spend our days multi-tasking, interrupting ourselves with one task, before our first is completed, or doing several things at once.

I'm just as guilty – terribly so as a matter of fact... spending the days trying to get something done, and then getting up every few minutes to... wash the dishes, or change the laundry, or fold the laundry – then lose the thread of what I was doing in the first place, because my brain has been conditioned that I have to do, do, do... and if the drier buzzes, that means the laundry is dry and needs to be put away so that the next lot can go in to dry, and never mind the fact that I was mid sentence on some part of dialogue or whatever...

And never mind that I have no connection with either (any) task that I was doing. That's life, right?

I'm beginning to think not.

I said to Mir the other day that, one of the differences between she and I was that if she asks me to do something, I'll drop whatever I'm doing, do whatever it is she asked, then go back to what I was doing. She on the other hand, if I ask her to do something, will finish what she's doing first. While that is often frustrating to me, because often what I'm asking for needs to be done right away so I end up doing it myself, I'm starting to think that she actually has the better idea... that what she was doing is the better for not having been interrupted... because her inner and her outer thoughts and actions were focussed on the same thing.

You Are Not Alone

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Teachers arise from somewhere within me that
is beyond me, the way the dark soil that is not
the root holds the root and feeds the flower.

Whether through birds in snow, or geese honking in the dark, or through the brilliant wet leaf that hits your face the moment you are questioning your worth, the quiet teachers are everywhere.

I was sitting reading on Saturday afternoon, the child I was sitting for was napping upstairs; I had cleaned up and cleared up in the kitchen and still had a few moments to myself. I tried writing at first, but didn't get very far, it was hard to do without what had gone before, and so, instead, I decided to try and finish a book I'd been reading. I didn't get very far with that either. I was unsettled, restless... not sure whether I was feeling like I was a part of life at that moment or not.

I happened to look up, and there, only inches away from the window, was a deep. She seemed to be looking in, just as I was looking out. We exchanged the briefest of glances, before the deer – appearing suddenly startled – ran off along the side of the house. But then, sitting in the silence of the house, I didn't feel quite so alone... the dog was sleeping on his bed, the child asleep upstairs in his crib... I just put the book down and let my mind drift for a while, until just before the others got home.

I'm Not Lost

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

I'm only lost if I'm going someplace
in particular.
--Megan Scribner

When we can free up our sense of needing to arrive in a certain place, we lessen the weight of being lost.

One of the things I'm starting to realise while I'm driving around here, when I'm all anxious and tense because I don't know 'the way' to somewhere or another is that... sooner or later I am going to hit a road I knew. Whether that road is I40, or 15/501 or even 54, sooner or later I'm going to find somewhere.

Of course that doesn't help if I'm supposed to be picking Mir up, or getting to a particular place at a particular time, but... it does make things slightly easier, and if I'm by myself in the car, who's to know that I got 'lost' in the first place. I could just have decided to take the scenic route.

I still want to go on a walk in downtown Carrboro some time soon. It doesn't have to be a long walk – and other than getting there, whether by bus or car, I don't really want to have 'plans' to be some place specific. I just want to wander around and see what there is to see. Can't get lost that way...

Don't know why I'm all of a sudden so worried about getting lost.

What Is Happening?

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Of magic doors there is this,
you do not see them even
as you are passing through.
--Anonymous

Often as we are being transformed, we cannot tell what is happening.

Rather than often, I think I have to say it is 'likely' that we cannot tell what is happening at all. Change by its very nature is unbalancing – even gradual change – and when unbalanced, it is difficult to see truly.

Even in those times that you do realise the change, the transformation that has acted upon you, for good or ill by things in your life, or by pressures and circumstances or even by well intentioned attempts to conform to expectations, it's often too late to do very much about the transformation if it's an unwelcome one, or to appreciate where it came from if it's one that makes things better.

One of the changes in me that I regret the most, and which I think has had a greater bearing on other things that have changed and transformed in me – that I've been working on – fighting against for a long time now, is the fact of my having shut down on a spiritual level for the most part, until very recently.

Perhaps it was an unconscious thing, and perhaps it was a necessary thing, but it was an unbalance that I felt as a hole inside of me, and one that I was powerless to do anything about... again, until recently, and now, I fear very much that it is going to take either a long time (longer than I'd like) to awaken again, or (more likely) that the awakening will be sudden and devastating... to coin a phrase, "A storm is coming."

My spirituality was such a greater part of me that allowed me to put aside 'self' and to give to others over self gain. In closing down spiritually some of that ability waned. A sense of self that was not altogether healthy at times asserted itself, and while I am aware that sometimes you have to take care of yourself, to see to your own needs, wishes and desires, it was and is not something I enjoy doing. It makes me feel selfish and cynical – the whole 'what about me' question.

But now I'm feeling echoes of 'Yeah, what about you?' coming from somewhere deep inside, mocking my own selfishness of thought... and along with all of those things, thoughts and wonders and feelings that I haven't felt in a long time.

Each moment is a doorway and each breath a transformation, even if only for a second... only by living consciously and paying attention can we – can I - hope to understand the chaos that is around me, through which and by which I am transformed as you and every other person in the universe must see through for yourself.

Surrender

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

We are human beings:
our being infinite as wind,
our human house full of holes.

Like a bird gliding on the current of air it cannot see, or a fish swimming with the tide of deep in it cannot see, or a note being sung as part of a song it cannot see, we are all left with the necessary risk to starve the ego-that in us which believes it can control the world-so that the unseeable music of being may rise and carry us

I surrender...

I am not in control...

These are admissions I try to make to the universe out aloud on a regular basis, and especially on each and every occasion that something I have thought I might like to do, be, see, hear, have or give, has not turned out in the way that I have seen it might.

In each moment and each experience there is a lesson to learn, a thing to discover, or a question to be answered. This weekend just gone I believe it was to enable Mir and I to explore our mutual parenting styles and also to discover that we were both of one mind in that regard, when our planned trip to Carrboro was put aside in favour of looking after our friend's children for the day.

There was also another moment, when putting the youngest down for his nap... he wanted to sleep, but didn't want to give in to sleep – but was more than happy enough to handle a cuddle. surrender... you are not in control Singing lullabies, with the toddler wrapped in a blanket in my arms, I was suddenly struck with and overcome by a strong feeling of emotion. Call it love, compassion... call it what you will... the little one was asleep by then... and I was choked up, setting him down to sleep – so cutely curled up into a little ball as soon as I set him down.

I'll call it the 'unseeable music of being' a Oneness with Universal Light and Love' that came over me in that moment, another step of awakening that has been long in coming.

To Be Loved and To Love

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

If those I love can't recognise me
With my soul out in the open,
I will no longer retreat
And show what is familiar.

You do not have to do anything to be loved, and being who you are does not let others down...

I wish I believed this... all of it, I mean.

The first half of it I don't have any trouble with... that I believe. Oh sure there are times when... maybe having tried real hard at something or another and feeling unappreciated or getting snapped at, I might not feel loved, I still know that I am. I'm sure that works the other way around. I know that works the other way around, and that is where my problem in believing in the second half of the sentence comes in... because I feel like I let Mir down a lot of the time... because if she ever doesn't feel loved and appreciated then I've let her down.

And it happens a lot. It happens way too often and I want it to stop. For all that I'll show her in things big and small that the love I have for her is true and is what keeps me going, and what makes me make cookies, kill spiders, do laundry and all the other things I do to physically care for her (and us both) I'm clumsy when it comes to other romantic stuff, because... well there it is, because... I don't know why.

It's supposed to be the guy that has trouble with romantic things in a relationship, not a woman. Why do I? Have I honestly been so cowed by previous experiences with other people that I'm honestly afraid to... joke about spoiled pancakes or... behave in a goofy way, or put aside something I'd been doing so that I can give more of my attention when it's needed? I hope not, because that would be a weakness I'm not comfortable in living with. Have I had my trust so abused in the past that I'm afraid to fully let go and trust again. I hope not, because my love and trust for Mir is all important to me; am I too dense or too cowardly to be romantic then?

I also know it's not all about the romantic gestures, but just about demonstrating love for someone by the things that you do and say. I just want to be the woman I am meant to be and be emotionally supportive to the one I love. Is that too much to ask?

'You' and 'Me'

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

The real voyage of discovery
Consists not in seeking new landscapes
But in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust

How often do we barricade and fence up our lives against hurt and loss, thinking we're keeping the painful things out, when they're already trapped inside us eating at our roots, and what we really need to do is to open the gate and let them out?

The real question is how do we open that gate?

I know that my biggest 'barricade' is that I don't open my mouth and speak when maybe I should. I don't do it because in the past (talking about long past), whenever I did I always ended up getting hurt, which I fear happening again, but in not doing so, I end up hurting myself... nicely vicious circle there... no? The pain is already trapped inside with me.

The thing that bothers me is that back at the beginning of our relationship, I always used to talk, so... what's the difference, what's changed? Was I more fragile in my confidence than I thought and maybe one time I said something, I perceived a slap, and that one – probably small and insignificant – moment underlined that 'I shouldn't open my mouth'? The trouble is, I don't know. I can't figure out where the barricade went up and when I stopped talking... and I can't figure out how to open the gate to let the rabid bunnies out.

I want to talk, and I try, but it hasn't been helping, because I still don't feel like I can, or should, without devaluing others opinions and feelings in favour of my own. I'm told it's in the 'way' I speak when I do that is the problem; that I need to make the language less accusatory... apply less blame. I can try, but I try the same as the next guy, and if I'm hurt I'm not necessarily going to be composing the award winning speech about how I feel. I'll be hurting. It really does worry me, because I just want to be open about everything... I also don't want to sound like I'm just whining. I just want an open line of communication.

I'd also like to stop translating 'you' to 'me' all the time... and have it stay as the universal 'you' that I'm sure it's supposed to be.