Heartwishes

Crazy week. People giving me sh** about things that aren't any of their damn business. At 41, I realize that I'm entitled to make my own decisions regardless of what others think, but I still have no problem falling into the provocation trap should the opportunity arise.

Now that I'm really trying to apply new techniques to my meditation, I've discovered that my heart doesn't feel open and full of light. No, my heart often feels dark, and sometimes I get a hard clump in my chest as though my heart was made of stone. Dislike.

It's been easier to move my mind up towards my brain. Being a lover of rules and order, I need to first deal with a lot of things intellectually in order for them to take root, even things of an emotional or creative nature. Which is why I'm loving my Sally Kempton book, "Meditation for the Love of It". It's like a cookbook with tons of meditative recipes. And like any cookbook, you have to try different recipes to find what suits your taste. Since taste is individual, I recognize that if one method doesn't do it for me, I can try another.

Still, this feeling of darkness around my heart has been a concern. When a yoga participant recently shared that she experienced an epiphany while taking part in a yoga workshop I was teaching with some others, naturally I was happy for her, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to feeling somewhat jealous as well. What she told me was while she was thinking about how grateful she was about her circumstances, she was suddenly overcome with a strong feeling of sheer and utter joy. Hmm, just like the book said.

Grateful. Thankful. Gratitude. I so get that. So why is it so hard for my heart to realize it, too?

Then I reached a turning point this week. Not in meditation, instead while I was thinking about everyone that was annoying me. I suddenly realized that I didn't want to be pissed off anymore. And so it began.

I still haven't reached a point of awakening in meditation, but "the shell that separates me from love" doesn't feel as thick.

I think I could even sense the arrival of dawn.

It's one thing to talk the talk...

...but we all (should) know that talk is cheap

...and what matters is how we walk the walk!

I have to admit, it's very convenient to label myself a "seeker" so that I don't have to overly exert myself to actually change something. I get all the creative urges that can be associated with the seeker - I long to go on retreats, read selfhelp books on philosophy and meditation, and search online for artistic summer courses. I fantasize about changing my exercise routines and eating habits at the same time I strongly consider the ontake of a simpler lifestyle that's more sustainable with less consumption.

Then the urge turns more into an itch, and that's when I feel like something, anything, has to happen. It could be that I start longing for new clothes, workout equipment, along with a sundae from the Ben & Jerry's café. I buy some wine (still unopened) in order to set the mood for the romantic evening I dream of my P and I having once the kids have gone to sleep.

I make plans. I make promises. And instead of actually doing these things, I keep on searching, usually by Internet, for more. It's like I'm the "non-adrenaline" seeker; the effort it takes to get going somehow manages to outweigh that insatiable longing for more.

And so yet again, late last night, I was online admiring a print that had caught my eye a few months earlier. When I googled the quote depicted in this print, I discovered that there were a number of others that had made their own version of this print. Then it dawned on me; the orginal artist was perhaps not the one who had come up with this particular saying... And if there were others making their own prints...

Turning around, I reached up to the top shelf of the bookshelf behind me and pulled down my small painting box that I had bougt for a summer course my husband had treated me to last summer. I grabbed my sketch pad and googled fonts. Then I spent the next two hours (although it felt more like 20 minutes), making sketches and drawing.

After all this time, I hadn't realized that I had it in me to create something on my own. Either that, or I just didn't dare try.

Picture from Google

House of mirrors

Just got back from a trip to Stockholm where we had had an awesome time at a great amusement park: Gröna Lund. It was a roller-coaster bonanza, and luckily I didn't have to deal with my distorted reflection in the house of mirrors.

It's enough that my mirror vision has already gone freaking haywire, and we haven't even hit bathing suit season yet! May was to be my month for "displaying some character", and while I don't feel the need to go all out on a diet, I did vow to take extra care of myself for a period of 31 days and see what, if anything, happened. I skipped temptuous snacks, made a greater effort to eat more healthily, and increased my number of workouts as well as meditation sessions.

The results can be summed up with one word: eh? On the surface nothing has changed. However, I notice I'm becoming more and more selfconscious about my appearance and its supposed deterioration, which I know is crap, but still I'm feeling really mental about it. This is why I neither diet nor do I weigh myself because it takes almost nothing for me to start obsessing about my figure.

I realize I'm heading towards my next phase in life (to put it diplomatically), I just wish there were a handbook that could show me which changes are inevitable, and which ones I can only blame myself for. I remember from an episode of Oprah years ago that Dr. Christiane Northrup (pre-Botox, yikes!) presented her book, "Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom", and I thought, "I'll have to remember that for when I get old!"

Well I guess it's time for a visit to Amazon.com.

Picture from Google.

How about a warm cup of "Shut the hell up"?!

If we're going to allow all of our feelings to come forth on the mat, well at least I won't have to worry about whining frustration not showing up...

Even though tonight's session felt good from the second I got onto the map, and the therapeutic effect was just what I needed after a tough day at work, that nagging voice in the back of my head was truly begging me to open up a soulful can of whoop-ass (to put it mildly).

Here's an excerpt, and might I commend myself for not giving in to my mind's aggravating, passive-agressive comments and "suggestions" (save one):

God, you're just so tired today. Are you sure you want to do this?

I just don't think you're up for getting sweaty.

Maybe you just should write that e-mail reply now (Note that it's 6:45 P.M. and NO ONE is working at this hour!)

Maybe you should just go eat dinner first instead, and maybe you can do this later.

Or you could just do this tomorrow instead. No, wait, you can't, well maybe you can just skip it altogether this week.

Aren't you going to call your family, just so you can check in on them?

I wonder if anyone's written anything interesting on FB within the last 20 minutes?

Oh! A text-message!! Aren't you just going to make sure it's not important? (I did; it wasn't.)

Try as you may, I was onto you tonight. I let you babble on aimlessly while I focused on breathing and how I was feeling on the inside. There I could feel that lump of frustration after a long and tiring day.

Luckily, the pros totally outweighed the cons. Before I knew it, a 75-minute session had passed.

And I felt so incredibly much better for it. Now I'm going to tune in to BBC's "Property Ladder"!

Picture from Google and title shamelessly stolen from Ben Stiller's sadistic orderlie in "Happy Gilmore"!

Being Confusedcius

A Facebook group titled "Åttaveckors meditation" (8 weeks of meditation) has inspired me to start meditating on a (nearly) daily basis. For that, I'm grateful.

I'm also in the midst of reading Sally Kempton's Meditation for the Love of It in an effort to take my meditation to a deeper level. It all sounds so nice in the beginning, things like: There's no such thing as a bad meditation along with other incitements meant to ease the nervous novice.

Then certain ground rules are laid: Meditation requires discipline, and in order to go beyond the first pleasures of relaxation and move closer towards the Self, one must have a clear ambition to journey inward. "OK," I think to myself, "That makes sense..." I try some of the exercises and realize that this kind of meditation isn't as easy (at least for now) as the mindfullness exercises I've tested.

In the following chapter (that I'm in the process of reading) the suggestions start: create a sacred place (perhaps with a raised altar), meditate at the same time each day, cleanse yourself first, wear the same (washed) clothes, and so on. I know this is what Patanjali had written in his Yoga Sutras, but that was another era to say the least. This is when I start to wonder, "Whatever happened to 'meditating is as easy and accessible as breathing itself'?"

While meditation isn't about religion, the element of faith is unavoidable since one has to believe in the Self in order to bring some meaning to this practice. Yet my Western mind reminds me that if I'm not critical to my readings, I'm basically a sitting duck begging to be brainwashed.

So with furrowed brow I try to figure out what leg to stand on: Go back and stick with simpler feel-good exercises and see what happens? Or raise the bar, follow the suggestions, and hope I'm not making a fool out of myself?

But, wait! I live in Sweden - the mecca of the middleground!!

I come to realize that I can try deepening my practice with Kempton's techniques whether I follow the suggested routines or not. I've decided to interpret the suggested routines not as mandatory, but rather as well-intended advice that may pave a more focused way towards seeing my Self.

Wants and needs

Angry patients may use their frustration as a way of not letting their disability get the best of them, but the price they sometimes pay...

Ask yourself, if given the choice between having a wheelchair you can lift into your car without any help (but that you sit like crap in) compared to sitting comfortably, with support as well as good pressure distribution (while you get a subsidized wheelchair lift for your car), what would you choose? All too often I meet people WHO ARE COMPLETELY HUNG UP ON THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT DO that it overshadows everything else and consumes all this energy the way a leech sucks blood. Paradoxically they are limiting their freedom more by prioritizing their damn cars because the chairs they subsequently choose restrain their level of function in all other areas.

I, too, need to be reminded about what I really need as opposed to what I want. My motivation to doing yoga still has a lot to do with vanity and my idea that keeping my figure will keep me happy. My past two sessions I have concentrated first on acceptance while tonight I needed to cool down, soften up, and de-stress. Almost immediately I could feel a mental shift and realized that when I'm stuck in a fixed idea of demanding that things either stay the same or are adapted to suit to my tastes, I am not the most fun person to be with.

How refreshing it was to suddenly feel myself open as a vision of my family and me on vacation in the sun materialized. We're leaving for Teneriffe in two days. Instead of worrying about what I want to do, I am going to try to appreciate not having anything to do.

Woe is not me.

Here's the thing. I have money. I have more money than I need. I have the privilege of being able to buy stuff I don't need. So why do I get stressed out by spending money? At the same time I stress out for being unable to satisfy my spending urges?

This month we spent more money than usual buying bikes for me and the kids. Despite the expense, that purchase in particular felt like a no-brainer because it's something we'll use for years to come. It's the smaller purchases that trigger my bouts of anxiety - things like styling products, summer shoes, anti-wrinkle creams, books. All those things that cost anywhere between $20-$50. As soon as I've bought one of those things, I am suddenly struck by visions of just a few more small, inexpensive items that I don't necessarily need, but that in my fantasy world would make life just a little bit easier and/or more comfortable... If only I had them, too, then I'd be satisfied...or so I think.

I totally get those who make a decision to cease with all unecessary consumption as a way of taming their desire-beast. I've done that myself for shorter periods of time when I've felt I needed a time-out from a sense of shopping frenzy.

Still, I don't want to just tame the beast; I want the beast to disappear or at least transform itself into a nicer creature that I can live with without feeling nervous about it taking over. I remember reading years ago that money is like energy; the only way to gain more is by sharing (i.e. spending) it. I get that.

Desire in of itself isn't the problem; it's the the fear of losing objects of affection that causes my pain. I remember my mother-in-law with a storage area literally stuffed to the brim with old things she dare not let go of because they were worth a lot of money. And I remember thinking, "They're not worth a dime if they're just lying here in heaps collecting dust."

My husband has a lot easier time when it comes to consumption by using his "Screw-it!" philosophy. And at times, he's clever enough to do it without confronting -ahem- I mean consulting me. Case in point: Next Friday we leave for a week-long vacation to Tenerife. We've been looking forward to this for months. We've been so busy that we're lucky if we see each other in passing as we go from one appointment to another. I realize, however, that since we have the kids with us (as always), there's not going to be any real opportunity for doing things on our own.

So P took matters into his own hands, and he booked us for a morning brunch and spa tomorrow, even though we'll being flying in less than a week. Had he asked me what I thought, I would have answered that we'd be better off saving our money for our vacation.

On the other hand, I realize that this is our chance to have some real quality time together.

And truth be told, we can afford it.

Sometimes, my husband is a genius. (Just don't let him know I said so, Ok?)

Picture borrowed from Google (at least it didn't cost anything).