Monday, March 6 Writing group:
Nothing to say. No where to go. Once upon a time I was able to do left hand writing. I called it that, but it wasn’t literally writing with my left hand, it was tuning into the other part of my brain. I don’t know why I can’t do it now.
There was a broken chord, wavering transparent, but outside all elementary clouds waving and streaming but not into shapes that would cohere into ideas figments of perception fragments of misunderstanding under the purple light of the far-off stars moving swiftly away.
And then there was silence. No I can hear a far off voice probably someone’s TV can’t hear what it’s saying maybe even an ad — a whole culture built around getting people to buy things they don’t need…
Once upon a time people lived in tribes, in clans, in massive interconnected families. Now we are all alone, feeling ourselves separate and disconnected even though the truth is that we are all interconnected. I think my thoughts are my own, but then some very strange thoughts go through my head and I wonder where the hell did that come from? It’s only much later that I remember that on the empath test I scored very high so I am surely an empath so lots of thoughts and feelings that pass through me are not “mine,” in quotes.
What am I thinking/feeling now? A folded crane, a desperate fear, another news story about something gone wrong, at some deep level. The deeper we get into it, the more complex it gets, all those threads tangling and how can we possibly see how to control it or change its direction or … but the complexity doesn’t matter because it’s all really simple, the only thing is to love the most miserable, sad, frightened being so it can feel held, cupped in a pair of loving hands.
Last year I participated in a series of talks presented by the Elisabeth Kubler Ross Institute. One of the speakers was Matt Kahn, who spoke about life after death. He said one of the most important things we can do is “learning to love our most fragile, frightened, and unworthy parts.” This struck me as something VERY IMPORTANT for me, because I tend to get angry at my weaker parts. So I have been working on it for a long time and it’s getting easier and more natural. It’s also true that my most basic practice, that I turn to when my mind is wandering or I’m paying attention to something I don’t want to support, is the lovingkindness practice. Sometimes I remember to do it, sometimes my mind just starts repeating “May all beings be held in lovingkindness,” which is of course the source of the image of the cupped hands.