Observation without Evaluation

Posted on September 10, 2011 by jenny

(Written in February 2010)
On a friend’s recommendation I got Tolle’s new book at the Library. It’s called A New Earth.  So far I’ve been agreeing with what he says.  He talked about ego and the problem of identifying one’s “self” with objects, dogmas, even one’s own body.  I think of the work I do when I take a big step back and try to describe myself objectively.  Also when I stand back and look at “this little group of jennys, bless them.” I’m not identified with any of them, nor do I have any requirement that they should not change, or should shape up.  I think about when somebody quoted Swami Kripalvananda’s answer to the question “what is the highest level of spiritual practice?” and he said “self-observation without judgement.” I was horrified.  I was still trying to achieve something that would prove that I deserved to live, and I thought that taking time to look at myself was “bad”.  I think the idea must have planted itself like a seed, helped along by NVC’s practice of non-judgement — “observation without evaluation,” until now when I actually manage to do it a lot of the time.

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What My Heart REALLY Wants

Posted on September 9, 2011 by jenny

(Written in July 2011)
Wondering if writing something would help.  I’m feeling badly scattered.  The computer has frozen on me twice today and I’m frustrated.  Maybe try a suggestion from Radical Acceptance — Tara Brach says something about needing to know what your heart really wants.  I’ve been thinking about it, and what I want is big and complex.

1) The earth is healthy, with clean water, clean air, and resources being used responsibly and sustainably.
2) People revere the earth and care for it appropriately.
3) People in public office are intelligent & compassionate and have high moral standards and are willing to work for peace and justice for everybody.
4) People who are disabled, sick, poor, having a hard time, can find appropriate, knowledgeable and compassionate help.
5) People know how to work together co-operatively, and everyone gets to do work that they really care about.
6) Schools are fun, learning is self directed, children spend a lot of time in nature.  Making sure that kids grow up healthy and happy is the highest priority for everyone.

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Dancing in the Streets

Posted on September 8, 2011 by jenny

Yesterday I was so bummed out about Obama failing to veto the Tar Sands Bill and allowing the gutting of the Clean Air standards, that I just wanted to give up on politics.  So I called my friend Beverly, whose political judgement I trust and she said “Have you seen what’s happening in Israel?”  She’d sent me a link a few days back, of people dancing in the streets in Tel Aviv, and then she sent me another one as we were talking.  I went to the computer, clicked the link and found Daphni Leef’s speech.  I started to cry.  Democracy may be strangled, almost dead, buried under the weight of corporations and the super-wealthy, in the United States, but it’s alive and well on Planet Earth!

Dancing in the Streets has long been my image for Peace, whenever I visualize it.  Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book called “Dancing in the Streets” in which she shows that the disorder once known as “melancholia” (now known as “depression”) has been rising in proportion to the loss of public celebrations.  She describes the book in an Op-Ed piece from the NewYork Times, Published: June 3, 2007

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Despair

Posted on September 7, 2011 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
Tried the Heart Flow again but nearly fell asleep so I got up & danced hoping it would help.  The damn dog next door with the high-pitched bark irritates me — I try to bring compassion to my hypersensitive irritable self.
Reading Greenspan on despair is tough going.  I agree with her that the culture pathologizes despair in an unhealthy way and simultaneously creates more of it with the pressure to “feel good”.  It makes sense that staying with despair could lead to transformation.  But either I haven’t had the right kind of help or I just don’t have the skills.  I’m tired of the struggle.  Maybe I just need more support than I’ve got.  It’s just too hard being alone so much.

Took Bella up Rte 3.  I could feel the pain in my heart but I was also open to the beauty of the day — one of the few times I’ve been able to have both.   The beauty was painful not heartlifting, but I felt very alive.

Next day:   Staying with my heart seems to help me be more present with the world, tho even beauty is painful, not uplifting.  I noticed that I’m not depressed tho I get waves of hopelessness, they pass and I’m back with grief.  I also don’t seem to be in despair any more.  Life is not meaningless — I was able to rejoice yesterday that I’ve been able to give both Gene and Greg opportunities to exercise their creativity in work that they love. And I have meaningful work which is this work to stay with my heart.  Doing it, although difficult and painful, is self-validating, I’m not questioning whether it’s worth doing.  Perhaps because I’ve given up all notions of “getting things done” out there.  I’ve dropped everything I can drop and fortunately people have been there to pick up what has to be done.  I wish there was an ashram where I could go and be supported through this process — on that thought something closes across my heart and bulges up into my throat.  What is it?  Hopelessness and anger that there is no such place and I have to do it all by myself?  The lump eases and I’m back with the huge ache in my heart.
I think it’s my intention to offer myself to the process of grief, to surrender unconditionally — I have faith that I will be transformed, but into what I don’t know.  At the moment I can’t imagine an ending to the pain, can’t imagine finding joy again.  I’m still willing to stick with this process.  It’s clear to me that this is what I’ve been given (or chosen) to deal with right now.  I started to say it’s my intention that’s made possible this more alive way of being with the pain.

When I’m in touch with the pain, it’s so deep and intense that I understand why I’m depressed so much.  I also understand why I cut myself as a way to deal with it.  So there’s greater compassion for my struggle.

For Greenspan and “heart flow” see earlier entry

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Compassion for myself

Posted on September 6, 2011 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
Put on the Oratorium CD.  Sitting on the floor, moving with grief, pain in the heart, lack of hope — walking out into the desert with the fragments of a culture, knowing that it’s most likely I will die in the desert, least likely that I will come to people who will receive joyfully what I’m carrying.  (Noise down the hill, there was so much noise last night that I was only able to sleep with ear plugs and fan on and relaxation CD.) I have only the vaguest knowing that there’s divine energy out there, buddhas and bodhisattvas, and they are holding our wounded planet very gently.  Whether or not anything ever heals does not matter because it will all die, but at least all this suffering is held in compassion.

Bring compassion to this poor woman, who’s fallen into the pit of terror and depression, who’s lost whatever sense or belief gave her life its meaning, who is having a hard time with noise, and is angry at herself for being so sensitive.

Oratorium in Memory of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915

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Guidance

Posted on September 5, 2011 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
Dear Spirits, I’m so angry at myself for creating all this misery.  Please help me!  Please!
    Dear Jenny, you are being much too hard on yourself.  This is why you really need a spiritual community — it is just too hard to do this work all by yourself, and too easy to fall into this horrible tight spiral of trying too hard and making yourself wrong.  Dear Jenny, we love you very much.  We are all around you holding out our love.  It’s OK to collapse completely, it’s OK to stop struggling to be better than you are.  You are doing just fine, stumbling around, getting the bills paid, making mistakes, being unable to get yourself up off the floor.  You need a break.  Something completely different like running downtown with the mail & then take the dog for a little walk  — a minimal walk is OK.

Did that.  Felt scared the whole walk.  I’m so sad to be unable to enjoy a beautiful day like today.  At least I was able to enjoy my two walks yesterday.  At one point I looked at the fear and tried to understand what it’s trying to tell me — at which it vanished, and now I feel sad and vulnerable and precarious.  Perhaps I’m scared because I’m refusing to listen to my feelings of sadness and vulnerability.  And I’m feeling lonely.
What do I need?  I need to enjoy the little things of daily life, I need emotional safety, I need to make heart-connections with friends.

Feeling pretty bummed out.  Driving back from town it was feeling like Brunswick and Cincinnati, places I used to live but don’t live there any more — don’t feel at home anywhere.

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Grieving

Posted on September 4, 2011 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
Took Bella up Rte 3.  I carried my painfully tight grieving heart and paid attention to my feet on the path and the colored leaves.  Sat by Skoogumchuk Brook for a little bit.  Was able to take in a little of the beauty of yellow leaves against the sky.

My intention: I offer myself to the process of grief, to allow it to transform me in its way.  I wish I knew better what to do next.  I’m afraid that my ability to grieve is badly compromised by the nature of my losses.  I found myself crying on the trail with the pain of losing the “real life” that I had for such a short time.  And even when the loss was clear — loss of Shenanigan, of Dana & marriage, I wasn’t able to participate fully in my grieving because I kept falling into depression.  I do not know how to let myself grieve, sit with my grief, without falling into depression.  I keep trying to do it but I’m afraid my efforts are sabotaged by dysfunction so I’m unable to really surrender into the process of grief which then creates more toxic depression.  It would be much easier if I could spend one day wholeheartedly grieving and the next have some respite and joy, but it seems like I am either stumbling through the fog and dark and cold of depression with very little joy, or else I’m “doing well” and the grief doesn’t appear at all.

Spent 20 minutes meditating, what Greenspan calls “heart flow” — just breathing in & out of the heart.  What I discovered is how wounded my heart is — grey with red wounds, battered and bruised and pierced by swords.  I realize I don’t care at all how much of it was done by others (mother launching her poisoned spear into my open heart) and how much by me in the effort to protect myself.  I see the wounds and I want to bring compassion and tenderness to my poor heart, comfort it, and ask nothing of it for a while so it might be able to heal a little.  I think it would be good to continue with this meditation.

I painted the image of my heart as grey and wounded with dark red slashes, & tried to stay with the pain.

Miriam Greenspan‘s book, Healing Through the Dark Emotions, has been very helpful for me.

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Guidance

Posted on September 3, 2011 by jenny

(Written in September 2003)
Dear Spirits, I need to connect with you and the spiritual foundations of the Universe.  Please help me.
    Dear Jenny, you are very much loved — by us, and by the Great Powers, and by the community that will assemble here this weekend.  There is endless good will to make up for any mistakes and failures.  The group is small enough so that real co creativity can take place.  Let yourself sink down and feel the foundation under you, and sense that the Spirits of Neskaya are holding the periphery.  You have built a very deep solid container here, and you are not alone in holding it.  This container makes possible all kinds of magic.  Relax and trust that the weekend will take care of itself.
Thank you.

And I do feel the connection — I’m resting on it.  The other day I was reading from June ‘96 about a Universe “big enough, wild enough, creative enough, compassionate enough” and I had a sudden sense of a huge being, big wild creative and compassionate, leaning down out of the sky and smiling at me.  I felt enormous love, and I feel it now.  My heart is warm and the sadness and discouragement are gone.  Thank you.

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Choice

Posted on September 2, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2003)

I think a big chunk of the sadness I’m feeling is seeing how we humans struggle in the midst of so many forces pulling different ways, and we know so little about these forces, and we imagine we’re making conscious choices when all too often we are being battered by a wind and waves that we don’t even see, and are carried out of our depths and in some other direction.  I suppose that’s why really only spiritual practice can help us hold on to a center.  Though even with spiritual practice there can still be hidden undertows: my long struggle with depression & anxiety rooted in trauma, and other biological factors, predispositions, that people blame themselves for when the truth is they had no choice.  In some ways there’s so little that we really do have choice about — to be present, to be aware, to seek the truth, to try to love — only how we respond to something, not what comes to us or what (we think) we go toward…

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Reading Old Journals

Posted on September 1, 2011 by jenny

(Written in 2003)

I’m reading from the beginning of ‘97.  Mostly writing down affirmations that I don’t believe.  I’m clearly in pretty bad shape.  I can also see how badly my husband let me down, how he was distancing himself. How the help he offered was always intellectual /cognitive and sometimes invalidating: he got angry at me for “whining”, worried that he was “enabling” me by helping me — every time he did one of those I ended up feeling so bad I just wanted to die.  The times when I actually felt strengthened were when Lynelle validated that the feelings were responses to abuse in early childhood.  It’s so clear now — but it certainly wasn’t then.  And I didn’t have the understanding that if it “worked”, if it made me feel stronger and more grounded, then it was true, and if it plunged me back into the misery, then it was false.  I think I’ve only really got that very recently.  I see that my childhood experience left me with the belief that if I found something comforting, then it was a lie I told myself, but if I found it painful it was a truth I didn’t want to see.  What an inversion!  It was Mom & Dad who told themselves lies to keep comfortable, and who got angry or hurt if someone told them a truth they didn’t want to hear.

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