Category Archives: story

Making friends with myself

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The third wheel of attention in meditation, according to Chogyam Trungpa, is making friends with yourself.

After six months of daily sitting using the technique of whole body awareness,  I have gotten views of my whole life that have deepened my compassion for myself and for other human beings.

When I was a child, under the surface of civility and compliance, all sorts of disturbing awarenesses arose. Confusion, doubt, helplessness, inarticulateness.

For instance, at times I concluded that something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I was being judged and didn’t meet the standard, that no one understood me, that it was not enough just to be myself, that what I felt didn’t count.

These are painful thoughts to think and feel about oneself. Yet show me the person who has never experienced this.

These thoughts occasionally arise even now, on and off the cushion, and I now am quite aware of the emotional pain that accompanies them.

Maybe the most worthy response to awareness of suffering is compassion. I don’t believe there is really a purpose for suffering. It just happens as part of the human experience.  And, it is often a catalyst for growth.

So for all children, and for all those who have survived childhood, I feel compassion. It is hard to grow up. If you’re reading this, congratulations on making it.

I notice fluctuation in how I feel about myself. Some days, full of confidence and vigor, other days, full of doubt and sorrow. Many days, both. Whatever it is now will change.

Part of making friends with myself is beginning to see how I create my own suffering. How I have punished myself, how I have viewed myself as being much smaller than I really am.

I have sold myself out by not dreaming big enough and believing in my dreams.

I can now stop doing that each time I become aware of it. It feels great each time I stretch into my Large Self!

I love this quote from Mark Twain:

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

The task now is to know which ones never happened, and to respect the ones that did happen and note their lessons, and all let these past troubles go.

Six month assessment

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The year 2010 is nearly half over. I have meditated daily for 30 minutes consistently if not perfectly for 6 months.

It’s time to assess my own progress: I have entered a period in my life that is marked by experiencing myself as more whole, healthy, happy, grounded, centered, engaged, energetic, positive, loving, playful, present, alert, aware, appreciative, grateful, and full of equanimity, vitality, wonder, and compassion than I was before this year of meditation began.

Some things have remained the same from the start: I’m still working where I work and living where I live, although I have spent time really examining these two major components of life and I feel open to change. I know myself better and might make different choices now, and I can live with the choices I made in the past for the time being. I appreciate what these choices have allowed me to experience.

I’ve been fairly regular in weekly attendance at Appamada on either Wednesday night or Sunday morning and having a practice inquiry session (“meditation coacing”) with Peg each time.

I’ve continued my association with NLP: I finished assisting for the first time at Best Resources’ NLP practitioner training in April. It was more relaxed to learn it all the second time and to help newbies learn it.

I feel closer to my family than before.

I still go monthly for acupuncture and cranio-sacral work and every 3 weeks now for chiropractic treatment.

I still have my yoga practice.

Things that have gone by the wayside: I joined a gym in February. I went when the weather was cold. I haven’t been since late March. I should quit and save that money.

I also went to a couple of Flint Sparks’ classes at Appamada on the Diamond Sutra. Not sure why, but it just didn’t jell. I dropped out.

I’ve undertaken a few new endeavors since beginning this year of sitting: I agreed to be the program director for the Austin NLP meetup.

My friend Katie and I started a Peripheral Walking meetup here in Austin in January, and I assist her with our monthly meetup.

After 12 years of doing mostly Iyengar-based yoga, I began yoga teacher training this month. That’s a big commitment — in time and money. I’m deepening my practice and learning a skill and gaining a credential that I will use in my future.

I also committed to participate in the Zen precepts program at Appamada, which meets monthly for a year and includes journaling and self-observation. We’ve had one meeting so far. The course is based on the book Waking Up to What You Do. I will write more about this because it ties in with this blog really well.

I’m also taking part in an advanced NLP study group taught by Keith Fail on strategies.

So I’m full, overflowing even, with wonderful activities, learning, and sharing.

I know myself better and see a path into my future that I like, and that path leaves a lot of space for the Universe to teach me as well.

If those of you who know me in person or who read this blog notice anything that I’m not noticing, please feel free to bring it to my attention in the comments.

Waiting for the love of your life

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We’re going on a little journey, so get ready.

First, find 20 minutes when you won’t be interrupted.

Next, find a quiet place to sit where you won’t be interrupted, perhaps in a chair (where you’ll sit with your back erect, not leaning against the back of the chair, and with the soles of your feet flat on the floor) or cross-legged on a cushion. You’ll probably want to elevate your butt about 3 inches. Use a zafu, a firm cushion, or folded towels or blankets.

Turn off your phone and other distractions.

Ready? Shake the tension out each leg. Shake out your arms. Wiggle your spine gently. Wiggle the tension and stiffness away. Shrug your shoulders and drop them a few times. Work your neck. How’s that?

Now sit, spine straight but not stiff. Close your eyes and open your mouth. Start checking in.

First, your breath. Feel the air entering your nostrils, expanding your chest, leaving your nostrils. Feel your body’s natural movements with each breath. Without any forcing, allow your breathing to become smooth, steady,  relaxed, and comfortable.

Check in with your head next. Feel all the parts. Especially notice any tension in your eyeballs and around your eyes, in your tongue and lips, in your jaw. Relax them. Let your jaw hang open.

This is important: I want you to get a look on your face as if you are in the dark, and a greater love than you have ever known is nearby. If you try to pursue it, you drive it away. It must find you, and the only way for it to find you is for you to be still, silent, and aware.

This love operates on s-l-o-w time. You have to match its pace for it to find you, so believe that for right now, for just this moment, you have all the time in the world to make this connection.

You are being patient and anticipating this connection at the same time. Your face has a look of wonder on it. Keep this look on your face. If you lose it, come back to it.

Now notice your neck and shoulders. Sometimes we collect tension in habitual places. Notice where these places are on your body today and relax them. Imagine each inhalation going directly to the tension, dissolving it, then each exhalation taking it out of your body.

Move down your arms, hands, fingers with your awareness.

While checking in with your back, also see yourself from the back in your mind’s eye. See yourself sitting there in silence.

Slide your awareness down the front of your body, releasing any tension you find.

Now check in with your pelvis — back, sides, front, bottom. Again release tension.

Move your awareness down your legs, feet, and toes. Notice how your entire body feels. Glowing? Lighter? More relaxed? Alert?

While you were scanning your body, love started permeating your cells. Now you are really starting to feel it. Each moment, you are becoming more and more immersed in love. Take your time and savor it.

Now, in your mind’s eye, view yourself sitting there from the front. See yourself with your eyes closed, jaw open, look of wonder on your face, suffused with love. You can move your point of view to straight overhead, to the side, wherever you want — just get a good look at yourself sitting there.

For the rest of your sitting time, let your awareness move as it will from noticing your whole body, to releasing tension from parts, to noticing the love of your life permeate your being, to being open to your experience.

(Thanks to Vivian, a member of my sangha, for having this look on her face for me to catch a glimpse of, thus inspiring my meditation and this post.)

I’m back, sitting without pain and with more spaciousness

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I haven’t posted for about two weeks because I haven’t had internet access at home (short version: dead tree fell and took down cable; long version: it involved finding someone to rescue the bee colony living inside the dead tree), and I’ve been super busy at work with no time to sneak a blog post in.

So here I am. This little break from blogging has given me some perspective. Here are some of my newest revelations:

  • After about 3 months of daily sitting, I stopped hurting for the most part. My body learned to accommodate the practice of sitting in stillness for 30 minutes without pain. I am grateful for this. Mind you, the pain of sitting was never severe. It ranged from just-above-the-radar discomfort, to mild pain, to stiffness, tightness, hurting toward the end of a session. Sitting through the pain with awareness taught me about the variety of sensations called “pain,” and that it’s dynamic, constantly changing. I didn’t know this would happen. I thought pain was part of it.
  • I have a sense of having more spaciousness within. I’m really unsure how to put this into words. How do you experience your own identity? Not in relation to others–how do you see yourself? I’m much bigger than I thought. Who I am is more centered and stronger, yet I have more capacity.
  • I forgot to meditate at least two more times (mumble mumble). Sometimes I remember late, and then I sit. Three times now I have not remembered until the next day that I did not sit the previous day. I like meditating at various times during the day, getting to know my various diurnal energies. And I think I’d like to start the day with it.

Okay, I’m off to zipline in Wimberley. Will post again tomorrow

That’s better

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Just sat. How could I miss the settling on my zafu, setting the timer, body scan, awareness, breath, whole body, relaxing, noticing, the weight of my back on my sacrum?

That’s more like it.

More story came up about forgetting to meditate yesterday.

  • I’m on vacation this week, and my schedule is different.
  • I went to Keith’s yoga class at Dharma Yoga last night, and we had a long savasana and then probably 5 minutes of sitting at the end.
  • What did you expect? You set this up so that failure was inevitable!
  • Besides, it’s not really about sitting for 30 minutes every day for a year. It’s about how attempting to do that will change me.

I’ve got a busy day ahead. Have a good one, y’all!

I missed a day!

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Tuesday morning, checking email, and I just realized that I completely forgot to meditate yesterday.

So here’s the big drama you’ve been waiting for on this blog, readers! I made a vow to sit for 30 minutes every day in 2010, and I have missed a day.

What will happen? Well, I’ll forgive myself, come up with a story (“it was all that sitting I did on Sunday that made me not even miss it” and “I made it through about one-third of 2010 sitting every day, the longest I’ve ever done that”), and move on.

Like literally. Right now I am going to sit.

People problems popping up

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Had a difficult time sleeping last night because of problems at work. Wanted to go back to sleep this morning, but my feet got me out of bed and walked me to the zafu. I needed that.

In the middle of my third month of daily meditation, people problems are popping up.

The first was about working with a health care practitioner with whom I did not have rapport. After a couple of days and some wonderfully wise words from my friend Katie (“That’s not how I experience you, Mary Ann”), I decided not to work with that practitioner. She’s probably talented and certainly well-meaning. I know what it’s like to work with health care practitioners that I trust, and I’m glad I know the difference.

Now some problems with a colleague have come to a point where I feel like I need to speak to our boss. Depending on my boss’ handling of the situation, I could decide to leave my job.

Recently I ran across this quote from Chogyam Trungpa:

Without problems, we cannot tread on the path. We should feel grateful that we are in the samsaric world, the confused world, so that we can tread the path, that we are not sterile, completely cleaned out, that the world has not been taken over by some computerized system. There’s still room for rawness and ruggedness and roughness all over the place. Good luck!

So…I will remain centered, clear about my values, compassionate to others, and ready to rock and roll with whatever comes up.

The transformation of pain

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Sat zazen a couple of hours ago. Long body scan, lingering on back of pelvis.

Last night, pain told me its purpose was stability.

I understand this better. When I was in that car wreck, back in 1996, my lap belt held, but my shoulder belt didn’t. My upper body was thrown around, while my lower body was held in place. There were two impacts, one to the left and one to the right, but not even. I had head injuries on each side and a terrific burning shock where my spine meets my pelvis.  Nerves and muscles, tendons and ligaments and fascia, all stretched to the max from two shearing forces.

After, pain and feeling this is not my body.  I lived and moved through days in a body that didn’t feel like me.

After a time, the pain resided somewhat. I wore the soles of my shoes unevenly. My gait was off. Sometimes one foot would drag a little. I had lost my poise and grace completely. I gained 40 lbs. over the next few years.

The allopathic medical people said “it’s only soft tissue injuries”.  The ER doctor said I’d be good to go back to work in a couple of days.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to call them idiots. They did not have a clue.

I get it that I compensated. I learned ways to pull myself together, literally. Ways to provide enough stability to walk, sit, and move through my days. Ways that were in integrity with my body-mind system as it was at that time.

Fast forward to years later, discovering/re-membering that I had a slight scoliosis that was diagnosed years before the car wreck. Compounding the healing process of getting aligned and strong.

Fast forward even more. I have been doing yoga for years, and seeing chiropractors and many other body workers. My body is actually getting strong and aligned in all the right places! It can actually be better than before.

The task at hand, that keeps coming up in meditation, is pain. That pain is from structures that held my body together for years.

I can now communicate with these structures, recognize and appreciate them for all they’ve done for me, and ask them if they would like to do something else now.

Recently I posted something about becoming aware of an internal energetic column, running from my sit bones through the center of my torso up through my neck and head, out my crown chakra.

Today I began connecting the pain from the old structure to awareness of the new structure. The old pain now has another option.

Happy weekend, y’all!

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Meditated last thing last night and was too tired to blog, and again first thing this morning and was too busy to blog until now.

Had a great session with my cranio-sacral therapist this morning, appreciating even more how it is possible to be aware of nervous system processes in one’s own body — and in others’ bodies.

After errands, a great session with my chiropractor, my sixth visit. I feel stronger and more stable and pain-free than before. And…I love that he’s got a plan.

Then a visit to Diji, raw cracker maker extraordinaire, and home to prepare my food for a retreat. Since my body doesn’t handle wheat well at all (and a lot of foods aredifficult), this is how I cope — make/take my own.

So here I am at the keyboard at last, just to tell you that I’ll be away this weekend, attending a women’s retreat called “Undertaken With Love,” about conscious living and dying.  Will keep sitting daily (I’m taking my zafu and timer) and post again after I return.

Happy weekend, y’all!

Inner dialogue about pleasure and pain

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Today is the first time that I sat after cooking but before eating. Just wasn’t that hungry, or rather, was hungrier for sitting than for eating.

A few moments from today’s session really stand out. I was sitting in half-lotus, ardha padmasana. My attention was on my energy body, being with the delicious vibrant hum of prana emanating.

Then my attention switched to feeling aches in my neck, hip joints, sacroiliac joints, and knees from tight muscles and residual tension from the work day.

It occurred to me that I could shift my position to relieve the pain.

An internal  voice said, “Oh, please, not yet. We’re feeling so pleasant and peaceful, sitting in this silent stillness. Moving will be a disruption. Let’s find out if we can extend these good feelings and ease the pain and sit in stillness a bit longer.”

I found I could intensify the pleasant sensations in my energy body a bit by giving them more attention to the point that the sensations of pain in my physical body were quite mild. There, but contained.

I wondered if I could overwhelm the sensations of pain with sensations of pleasure. It certainly seemed possible.

And then the sensations of pain became intense enough that another voice said, “Enough. Shift.” Guess it can work both ways.

So I shifted my position. My left leg was especially happy to stretch out straight and rotate the ankle before coming back into sukhasana.

And that was what was most remarkable about sitting today.

I want to add that when I sit, I experience much more than I can write about. A lot of it is nonverbal. It may be that the real benefit of meditation is this nonverbal “something else” that seems to be running in the background.

I also want to clarify something. These blog posts go to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. I got a comment on Facebook about a previous post about awareness that I have been pondering on.

The awareness I’m talking about isn’t necessarily being aware of anything in particular. It’s more that the act of being aware, regardless of object, is a huge surprising miracle in and of itself. It is unifying and endless and profound, and tuning into it is perhaps the most expansive experience I’ve ever had.