This was written on October 11, 2003, which happens to be my mother’s birthday. She died in November, 2001.<\/p>\n
Woke feeling scared \u2014 tried asking it but nothing happened.\u00a0 Tried bringing compassion to it, sitting next to it \u2014 no softening, no feeling\u00a0 (I could have tried \u201csoftening around\u201d it)\u00a0 Now I\u2019m up, fire, candle, tea \u2014 moved the dog from the bed to the couch next to me.\u00a0 I\u2019d be really lost without her to love.\u00a0 The dimension of meaning is gone.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how to live in this place.\u00a0 I can feel the fear that if I don\u2019t do<\/span> something I\u2019ll never come out of here \u2014 and at the same time there\u2019s a curiosity: what if I just stay here?\u00a0 What if I explore this place?<\/p>\n
A dream about grade school – where I learned not to let on that I wanted something for it wouldn\u2019t be given.\u00a0 Family was that way too.\u00a0 I think about babies who die because no one is there for them emotionally.\u00a0 This is no foundation for a life \u2014 for living with any sense of energy or delight or vitality \u2014 for being able to go out and meet both the joys and the disasters with a sense of adventure \u2014 this is what I really value and so want to be able to do: to meet life with courage, every fiber of me engaged, fully in the present… \u00a0 and this is why I\u2019m so angry and disappointed in myself, for being so numb and dead, for shrinking from the daily tasks \u2014 as though if I would only choose to, I could go out and meet life with a gay spirit…<\/p>\n
I felt a little better while I was writing about the dream, and I did feel some love in my heart\u2014 \u00a0 yes, DAMMIT, I do love life, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s so painful to go out into the world, to go to the laundromat and see people isolated in their cars, the world around them all paved, vacant-eyed people going through the motions, reading the \u2018want ads\u2019 while their laundry spins in machines \u2014 instead of going with others to the banks of the river and using their bodies to get the clothes clean.\u00a0 Some of this sense of isolation and hopelessness is projection of my own state, not everybody was numb.\u00a0 There were the two young men wrestling and laughing, the woman who came up and helped me…<\/p>\n
Dear Spirits, please help me!<\/p>\n
Dear Jenny, we encourage you to stay in this place of emptiness.\u00a0 There is great richness here.\u00a0 Do not be afraid.\u00a0 You cannot be stuck here forever, or rather this place is no different than any other place you\u2019ve been, it\u2019s still in the hands of god, still part of the territory of life that you are exploring.<\/p>\n
There was another thought and I lost it!\u00a0 Please tell me again!<\/p>\n
Dear Jenny, it doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 It will come around again as dreams keep coming until you are able to pay attention to them.\u00a0 There are infinite numbers of \u201csecond chances\u201d, there is no way that you can make an irredeemable mistake.\u00a0 Dear Jenny, do you not see your profound love of life, that makes you so angry when you see it squandered? Angry because you imagine that those others are doing it wilfully, whereas you are stuck with no choice having been inflicted with depression like a birth defect…\u00a0 or else the story changes and it\u2019s you who are wilfully refusing to enjoy a life that you know is good.\u00a0 Dear, no one wilfully refuses the gift of living with energy and eagerness, unless they have been hurt.\u00a0 Everybody wants to be happy, and everybody is either reacting to pain by pulling away (understandable and forgiveable) or else they are struggling, as you are, to learn how to use their hurts in the service of greater consciousness and compassion.\u00a0 No matter how lost you feel, this is your intention, this is what you are doing with your life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was written on October 11, 2003, which happens to be my mother’s birthday. She died in November, 2001. Woke feeling scared \u2014 tried asking it but nothing happened.\u00a0 Tried bringing compassion to it, sitting next to it \u2014 no … Continue reading