Tag Archives: loneliness

Gray Skies, Rain and Hope

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Last night my ambitious day of moving through the house putting small things in order resulted in an evening of pain. My foot had deep aching in the bone. If I wasn’t quite clear where the surgery had taken place in the days since August 17th, it was patently clear when I tried to go to sleep.

Because of my aversion to taking pain killers, my aching foot had to talk to me for a good half an hour before I reached for the tylenol 3 and the anti-inflammatory. The day was long and lonely. When I have no contact with others during the day, I see myself slipping down. The negative thoughts which surround me during this isolate period accompany me. My practice is to neither resist them, nor become angry with myself for not evolving more quickly. Compassion.

an opening not seen clearly

What I do know is that this is not the existence that I desired for myself. There is so much that I am doing right. There is so much that I am doing to sustain myself, to grow my spiritual practice. But the critical perfectionist nature that has allowed me to bull dog my way through obstacles is ineffective when I am constrained.

I listened to Sonia Choquette on Hay House Radio last night and her rebroadcast from April had an uplifting effect upon me.http://www.hayhouseradio.com/nowplaying.php She asked the question, “What is your adventure?” As I listened to her, I realized my adventure is to allow myself to pass through this transition from the old life to the new and be patient with the retreat that I am undertaking right now. If I were at the Vipassana Centre I could not write, analyze with words the realizations that are coming to me.

So my healing retreat is partial. My time alone is limited. What needs to be surrendered is knowing the time line.

What is screamingly clear to me is that I cannot remain in this cinder house of grief and fear. Making choices with no guarantee of the outcome is extremely difficult for me.This period has lead me to classic approach/avoidance resentment. Seeing that staying still without making choices is only bringing tears of frustration may be the only way for me to realize that I need to take action.

silver blue mosaic: sky and cloud

I have had my guide’s voice which speaks to me in my right ear tell me, “It is time.” The voice first came to me when I was at the Ayahuasca retreat in Peru. Since then it speaks very, very occasionally.

When I asked, “Time for what?” there was silence. Like a stern parent, the guide just was there amazed at the ridiculous ignorance I was showing. So I know when I can walk again without crutches, it is time… for whatever it is time for. Change, choice, risk taking, making a life for myself beyond this period of grief and regret.

Sonia suggested that at night before you go to sleep you ask the universe to surprise you with a show of bounty, a gift of abundance. After trying it, I awoke to find the Blue Cross very small check for repayment on my drugs. It wasn’t much but it was something. Immediately, I put it on my line of credit. My intention is to lower my large debt from my pay out on the separation. It is a step and steps add up.

While I was reading a meditation book this morning I came across some wonderful thoughts which I will share with you.Taking Flight was a find at Mosaic Books in Kelowna. Written by Jesuit Priest Anthony de Mello who incorporated a Buddhist practice with his priesthood, the book has many pearls of wisdom.

1.”Both what you run away from and what you yearn for- is within you.”
2.”If you think you are what your friends and enemies say you are, you obviously don’t know yourself.”
3. “To know things is to be learned. To know others is to be wise. To know self is to be enlightened.”
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5. “If you want a perfect world, get rid of the people.”
6. “Pain is the process of the craft entering into the apprentice.”
7. “I am the sower and the sown.”

My morning meditation practice does not indicate one who is highly disciplined. I allow it to slide to 2 pm some days. The time I sit changes. I answer the telephone. Some days I light candles and incense and chant. Other days I am quiet. Most frequently my meditation turns to a check of my body and my spirit and I find that I carry much sorrow. Instead of trying to run from it, I face it.

What I have observed over the last year and a half is that my shock, my denial of my situation was like one who was awakened from a dream. All that I knew to be my reality is gone. My mirrors had shattered around me, leaving me in darkness. It was a death; a sudden death of the type that you expect to wake up and find it to be untrue.

I pushed myself to get a job, to work, to do that which needed to be done. Moving through the tunnel felt like progress. But there was no joy.

Sitting meditation has helped me to find ways to be more loving and have more compassion for myself. When the negative voice begins, I could say you have done the best you knew how to do. There is no going back. Both the mistakes and the memories are gone. It is best to leave it all behind.

Sitting meditation allows me to make minute changes to my patterns of thought. The urge for control, for activity, for validation from others, for perfectionistic performances all surface. I observed the yearning to be a good girl, to please others in an attempt to prove that I am loveable.

I sit with it: it sits with me.

Right now, I can only be thankful to the friends who make contact with me. Right now, I can only ask why I have made such painful mistakes in my life choices. And I ask the universe to forgive me. I ask that I forgive myself.

But it is time to find another way to be. I pray for guidance. And I say thank you for all that I learn.

We are darkness, light and angers dance.

My goal is no longer self-improvement and has become self-acceptance. This is the Map. You are here.

What to do about Grief?

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sunsets

sunsets

My step-father is dying. He who cared for his mother as a boy and had to quit school in Grade 8 to support the two of them is now the invalid. She had MS and his father left without further contact. Left the two of them alone to cope with the world. And she was ill.

He served as a tail gunner for a year and was in London. He hated London. He hated most things. He is good at figuring out what he dislikes which is many things: politicians, camping, strange foods.

Pie. It was pie that we had to stay at the table waiting for as we travelled on holidays across the Southwest, down to California, into Mexico. Coffee and pie finished every meal on the road.

He smoked and hated exercise. He got enough exercise at work unloading beer cases at Lucky Lager. Camping, exercise, strange foods and politicians. He had enough of them.

As my mother fought her death for six years, doing everything she could do to stay on this side, he was puzzled and frustrated. He didn’t understand medicine. She was the nurse all of her professional life. He just had to sit for hours waiting for her treatments to finish, chaufeur her from hospitals to home. Now he hates doctors. Camping, exercise, strange foods, politicians and now mostly doctors.

He fell and broke three of his ribs. “If he had been in better shape,” the two doctors told me at different times. He once said that if he knew he would last this long, he would have listened to ,”your mother. She was always nagging at me to go out for a walk.”
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Life is strange and, well, inexplicable. She who exercised, went to aerobics and was a health care worker died eight years ago. We thought he would give up and die. He bought race horses. More and more race horses. He was engaged, waiting for the next race. Then this year, he sold his horses. They were costing him.

He gave up. When we would phone and ask what he was doing he would say,”Nothing. I am doing nothing like everyday.” But his heart was strong. It is just that he had no heart for life.

Now he is depressed, in pain with every breath, unable to understand what is happening around him and I ask him what happened in his 80 years of life and he said, “Nothing. I didn’t do nothing but go to work.”

He doesn’t remember the pie, he doesn’t remember the mock fights that he and my mother had. My brother and I are deeply in grief because of how he is.

While I was in Portland I heard one young check out clerk call to another in Whole Foods, “How you living, Carl?” “I’m living great,” was the answer. I so want to wrap my arms around this strange, distant man that stood silently in the back of the room while we watched tv, I want to make it better for him. The dying and the life. I grieve for what is happening to him and for what didn’t happen. I can only hold his hand with love now that he will let me.

Note: I had the priviledge to sit vigil with him and to love him out of life. He doesn’t hurt anymore. He doesn’t have to protect himself from feeling anymore.