Silence

Ever since starting meditation (I know I have been talking a lot about meditation, but these changes I am noticing are really important and huge!), I have not been listening to music. Let me rephrase that, I haven’t been listening to music while I am doing something else. I haven’t been listening to music in the car, at work, while I am cooking, while I am baking. I am giving 100% of my attention to whatever it is I am doing. This. Is. Huge. I listened to music all the time. I was listening to it in the car, at work especially, while I was cooking or baking. Now, I am enjoying the peace that comes from giving my attention to exactly what I am doing. It’s a nice shift… I don’t feel so distracted anymore. I can actually sit and think about what I need to think about, instead of just kind of thinking about it, and giving the song more of my attention.

I still listened to music while I was doing some spring cleaning this past weekend. My mind wasn’t really anywhere, and the music wasn’t all that loud to really distract me. It was Dexter Morgan, who has become one of my new favourite musicians. He doesn’t have lyrics; they are just songs with all sorts of instruments. It’s really quite good and I highly suggest you check him out. Back to being quiet. It’s an interesting feeling, being completely aware of your surroundings a little bit more because there’s nothing to distract you. Even being quiet with people—not needing to talk all the time or make a comment. Just being. I think meeting every week with the Vipassana group is helping with that. We are quiet for over an hour and a half. The teacher gives a lecture for 30-40 minutes, then we all sit together for 45 minutes, and then some of us stay for the discussion. It’s amazing how nice it is to be quiet, to have everything around you be quiet. When we are all sitting together, it is an amazing energy. I can feel the vibrations coming off of people, and they are all good vibrations. I have noticed that sometimes the energy makes me move—I start what I can only say is pulsing. Like a heartbeat. It really is quiet amazing.

My partner and I attended an extra meditation last Thursday and the one yesterday about deepening out meditation practice and what it means for us. We chanted, we applied the precepts to our lives. It really was powerful. Yesterday, since it was the end of our time, we participated in a ceremony, where we all chanted and went up and lit a candle to signify our wisdom and getting rid of the dark and only have light. After we all did this, Brian, our teacher, presented us with red cords that had been blessed by his holiness, the Dali Lama and our teacher’s teachers. I am faithfully wearing mine on my left wrist and will always remember my dedication to my practice. There’s a knot in the middle of it, which signifies a little Buddha being inside, to always guide us and to have with us. It feels good, starting this journey.

The group is going to have a two-day weekend retreat at the end of April, and I am so looking forward to participating in it. I have heard many great things about the woman’s house who hosts them, and how magical it is. It should be rewarding. And perfect timing. The group will also be starting a study group on Thursday’s in May, where we dive more into the literature of Buddhism and how we can really apply it to our lives. I am looking forward to this new energy in me, as well as how it is changing me. They may not be huge changes, but they are changes I can feel. And it feels great.

Weeding

I have been meditating for over a week now, and WOW! I can totally tell a difference. I meditate between 10-45 minutes a day in the morning when the world is still sleeping and quiet. I sit in my living room and I breathe in and breathe out. I focus on my breath and how it feels going in and out of my lungs. I focus on how my body feels when I give it breath, I focus on my lungs expanding and going back to normal. I feel so much better doing this every morning, it’s amazing how this simple act is helping me with myself.

Monday’s group meditation group discussed this idea of cultivation. This idea of cultivation sits with me well because I can apply it to both my spiritual path, as well as my life of gardening. When you want to get rid of a weed, you have to pick it from its roots. You can’t just pull it out and hope it doesn’t ever show up again. You have to really get to the “root” of the problem in order for it to not show up. If you just get angry with this weed and start ripping it and all its friends to shreds, they are going to come back tenfold. In order for the weed to be gone, you have to take time with it, work it from the bottom, and pull it all out. I mentioned in our discussion that a lot of the times, people get aggressive with weeding (figuratively and nonfiguratively) and I suggested that we learn to love these weeds, since we’re the ones that essentially put them there (consciously or unconsciously). We could use this weed that we’ve plucked and put it in our compost to make something we do want. Even if we say we have a strong shield to others opinions, the truth of the matter is we don’t have one that’s 100% effective. I am sure Monks and Buddhists do, but those are people who have worked with building this guard for most of their lives. Most of us don’t spend our entire day focusing on building up this impeccable soil because we work, we have kids, we have a family, we don’t plan on becoming monks. We start to cultivate when something has happened to us and we realize we need to change something in order to feel better.

Like I said in my previous post, I have been struggling with a weed in my garden that showed up out of NOWHERE last year. This weed has taken a pretty good liking to my garden, and it has been incredibly hard to pull it up. Part of my practice at the moment is to say “I forgive you. May you be happy” and actually mean it. Because I can say it, sure, anyone can, but that doesn’t mean I am actually forgiving and wishing them happiness. I get MAD and ANGRY and want to SCREAM. I think these weeds are hard to get rid of than most when it comes from someone who is in your family. We all got family issues, but when someone is deliberately cruel and says horrific things to someone in their family, it strikes a little closer to home. My theory on this is because we have this preconceived notion of what family actually is. We have these ideas of how you’re supposed to act, how you’re supposed to feel, what you’re supposed to say, and how much love you’re supposed to give to these people in your family.  

My family is a lovely and diverse group of people. I have my blood family who has helped me grow into the person I am today, and who have never stopped rooting for me to succeed. I have my partners family, who love me, support me, and are willing to help even though we’re not “technically related.” I have my friends, who may be dwindling down, but are now a solid base of friends that I can rely on. And I don’t really consider these people separate families; I consider them my entire family. It isn’t about separating it out anymore. The people that are in my life are people I WANT in my life. For example, the weed I am trying to pull, isn’t in my life. I don’t really want them in my life at all at the moment, because the fact that THAT much negativity can come out of one person, and have it be aimed at me is someone I don’t want to know or have in my life.

I made a resolution for 2013, and that is to not take shit from anyone. I am not being a pawn in anyone’s game. I am not doing this as a hurtful thing or an angry thing, I have just decided that I want nothing but positive people around me. People with good energy, healthy lifestyles, kindness, love, and happiness in them, because that’s what I am. Sure, we all have our off days, even I do, but I don’t want to surround myself with negative people anymore. So I have started doing some weeding and have said goodbye to those weeds who are no longer necessary in my life, weeds I don’t feel bad getting rid of.

I may have currently lost two of my family members, but I look around at all the new ones I have, and I feel happy. I feel love. And while I will continue to try in my spiritual practice to forgive, and wish people happiness, I will not do anything I am not ready for or willing to do. Especially if it will harm my spiritual journey.

I recieve Abraham quotes daily, and I really enjoyed today's. I hope you do too:

Nobody else knows your reason for being. You do. Your bliss guides you to it. When you follow your bliss, when you follow your path to joy, your conversation is of joy, your feelings are of joy--you're right on the path of that which you inteded when you came forth into this physical body.

--Abraham

Meditation and the elephant

I attended my very first meditation class last night. And by class, I mean, there was a 45 minute talk about the practices of meditation, followed by 30-40 minutes of meditation. After the meditation, people were able to stay and have a discussion afterwards. This involves things one may be struggling with in their practice, in their life, or positive experiences with the night’s meditation. It was really a great experience. The type of meditation we did was mindful meditation, or rather Vipassana. This type of meditation involves practicing being aware of the things that you do and the things that happen around you at every moment. Vipassana is a way of self-transformation through self-observation. It focuses on the deep interconnection between mind and body, which can be experienced directly by disciplined attention to the physical sensations that form the life of the body, and that continuously interconnect and condition the life of the mind. It’s an observation-based, self-exploratory journey to the common root of mind and body that dissolved mental impurity, resulting in a balanced mind full of love and compassion. This was my first time with this type of meditation—I usually participate in Zen meditation where you quiet your mind completely.

I have been struggling with a lot of family issues lately. Relationships have fallen through the cracks, and some awful things were said to me. So awful that I am having a hard time trying to forgive that person and move forward. While I know that it was essentially a reflection of them, I cannot believe that someone, more specifically, a family member would ever say such things about me. I have been working really hard to try and move forward, to not let it get to me. But there are times that it’s so impossible. Maybe not impossible, but extremely difficult. I am trying to figure out a way to work through this hurtle, to learn to forgive and really mean it. I can say “I forgive you,” but I don’t. I am still hurt and upset and just not wanting to have this person in my life anymore (which they are not currently anyway since we’re not talking, but you know what I mean).

90% of my family knows what has happened and was upset about it occurring. But, because MOST of my family is good at NOT taking sides, it has just become this giant sitting elephant in the room. How do you address this elephant? What do you say or do to get the elephant to get a little smaller? This giant elephant, and the fact that I am still extremely hurt about what happened, makes it hard for me to want to participate in family activities. I start thinking, “If I attend this, will so and so ignore me and make it extremely uncomfortable?” or “If I go to this, am I gonna lose my shit and address the elephant boldly and perhaps by doing so making an uncomfortable situation even more uncomfortable?”  It’s a difficult position. No one things they were in the wrong, but it seems that because there’s this large elephant in the room, people know they were in the wrong and don’t want to address it. Or perhaps, but not addressing it or acknowledging le elephant, it will go away. Who knows. I am trying my hardest to no longer focus on those other people. I am trying to focus on myself. To forgive. To love. To wish them the best. And I think meditation is the way to go.

It is now a goal of mine to meditate every day. Whether its 10 minutes or an hour, I will sit down and meditate. I am hoping to do this in the morning, since when I did it this morning; I have felt a hell of a lot more solid and to the ground. Although after last night’s meditation, I slept so soundly, so peacefully, and so hard. It was quite delicious.

Here’s to a new journey of working on myself.