From my journal for Monday, July 30:<\/p>\n
In Franconia. \u00a0I look around my house and see things that need to be dealt with and my heart hurts.\u00a0 <\/span>Why would my heart hurt when I see something that needs to be dealt with?\u00a0 <\/span>Something I\u2019m responsible for but don\u2019t want to deal with?\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe it\u2019s just the thing of feeling responsible for finding good homes for everything.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s also pain for the things that got lost along the way.\u00a0 <\/span>I think of Thomas Merton in the monastery, no longer responsible for anything except his own soul.\u00a0 <\/span>And I feel like I can\u2019t begin to come close to my soul with all these practical fidgets demanding my attention.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe that\u2019s why my heart hurts.<\/p>\n Yesterday, driving up, looking at the trees, the clouds, the sun, it was all so beautiful.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought of \u201cgod\u201d as \u201csource,\u201d the source of all this beauty, as the life force moving through everything, keeping it in being.\u00a0 <\/span>I think about whole paragraphs by Merton where he talks about grace, and consolations, which are sometimes \u201cvouchsafed.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>You can\u2019t get them by trying to get them, you have to live in the \u201cright\u201d way so you can be open when they come.\u00a0 <\/span>But it\u2019s not like a somewhat capricious god giving you something wonderful as a reward for good behavior.\u00a0 <\/span>Bliss and understanding and complete safety are always available when we can open to them.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t know why some people are lucky enough to spontaneously break through \u2014 I think this is what happened to Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle<\/a> \u2014 and others of us have to work very hard for a long long time.\u00a0 <\/span>I think of the \u201cdays of grace\u201d that I experienced for several months, and then they never came back again.\u00a0 <\/span>I think of my struggle now, to somehow let go of my old conditioning that makes me so unhappy.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s not my own inborn defects that are the problem, it\u2019s what was done to me at a very early age.\u00a0 <\/span>I think of Merton\u2019s struggle with self-will, with wanting fame and fortune and pleasure and all the rest of it \u2014 though he did come to see the emptiness of all that.\u00a0 <\/span>I remember having fantasies that my book would be a best-seller, but I usually saw through those right away.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t know if I was born without those tendencies, or if they were all ground out of me by pain, by never getting what I wanted, believing I was defective, believing that I had to \u201cprove that I deserve to live.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying this very well.\u00a0 <\/span>I feel like what happened to me, trauma and abuse, left me with wounds that prevented me from finding ordinary happiness: marriage, kids, satisfying work… \u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t blame Mom & Dad, but I guess I am angry at the universe \u2014 I could have done so much more with my life!\u00a0 <\/span>I could have spent my life in service to other people and been happy in their growth and happiness.\u00a0 <\/span>Instead I\u2019ve had to focus on myself, work on myself, trying to understand what happened to me, and then trying to unlearn it, to undo the deep conditioning.\u00a0 <\/span>Why have I been given this<\/span> task?\u00a0 <\/span>Or why did I take it on?\u00a0 <\/span>Looking at the this way, seeing my life as a task, as an assignment, I can see that it\u2019s a huge tough piece of work, and that I have done well with it.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m also grateful for the help I got along the way: family wealth, good schools, good therapists, good friends…<\/p>\n I sit here and look out at the green leaves, the sun on the trees deeper in the forest, and I feel sad at how little I\u2019ve been able to enjoy the gifts that I have had.\u00a0 <\/span>I think of skiing, the good days, sun & snow & rhythm of movement.\u00a0 <\/span>I think of being unable to sleep in the apartment at Jane\u2019s house, and not feeling that I could stop the clock…\u00a0 <\/span>so much pain.\u00a0 <\/span>Somehow the little joys never built up into a sense that joy was real and solid and available.\u00a0 <\/span>But the moments of pain weren\u2019t just moments, they were in my body, a weight on my heart and triggered by new pains…\u00a0 <\/span>Am I choosing not<\/span> to enjoy? I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 <\/span>I do find it painful that I can appreciate the good things but only rarely feel the joy.<\/p>\n Note: I have been reading The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton<\/a>‘s autobiography about how he entered the Trappist Monastery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From my journal for Monday, July 30: In Franconia. \u00a0I look around my house and see things that need to be dealt with and my heart hurts.\u00a0 Why would my heart hurt when I see something that needs to be … Continue reading