Control is Not Controlling

As I sat at breakfast with a talented dancer and yoga teacher, I enjoyed her presence, the sun on the patio and not so much the big white dog licking my butt between the iron boundary fence.

seeing flow

I am so entwined with work, discipline and control issues that I have to be skilled and respectful. Removing some of the ties to my usual method of living has to be done with a surgeon’s care. Issues that came up when she asked me to breakfast were deeply set into my habit mind like some glistening stone.

She is a dancer and does not have a lot of money. She has to work hard, travel and squeeze out survival by being a gypsy hustler. Intentionally dismissing these thoughts I remembered that it is my wholeness that allows me to accept gifts, love, care and help.

Being in control is exhausting and ultimately cruel to others. Can I grow my spirit enough to simply rest in the present without making it some kind of reality game where in I keep track of who holds the greatest power? So often, I have paid for others, I have helped people to move from one place to another, I have given free coaching advice, given away clothing. And down down down in the deepest darkness I have come to realize it is a bribe. It is a “Please love me” bribe.

The greatest attachment wound I carry is that I believed for decades that I was not loveable. And with that metal flack jacket over my heart, I have protected myself from injury. Or so I thought.

It is a tasty herb that viagra buy can be added to your order to account for the shipping. Horny Goat Weed has been used to treat impotence, increases sperm production and enlarges levitra generika find out address the penis. With easy online bookings, you are sure tadalafil 10mg to be there but then what makes peace in one’s life is the sheer amount of love, affection and joy that we get at home from our spouses. The acquired factors including that testicular dysfunction caused by testis injury accidentally, infection of orchitis or vesiculitis disorders and so on lead to the disease of erectile dysfunction such as excessive intake of alcohol, the side effect of some of the drugs, the excessive masturbation in the boyhood, the aging process, buy tadalafil from india and the heart has to be in good shape to keep pumping that blood around.) Potassium also helps. When I taught up North for nine years and a fellow teacher was leaving, I said to her, “I don’t have any other friends here. Nobody likes me. I haven’t dated because nobody is interested in me.”

As she watched the home made cinnamon buns rising in the over to take with her on her journey to the south, she told me her truth.

“You never let anybody close to you. You never see people trying to help you. You are constantly proving you are strong, independent and have no time for trivialities like friendship.”

After she left, that observation stayed with me. I wasn’t able to heal or solve the problem at that time… but it was like a first injection of the cure. It took more experiences, more failures, more heartbreaks to come to a place where I understood that I alone was keeping the bitter plant of “not being loveable” alive where my heart should be.

With the constant flow of people through my house staying at my bed and breakfast, I have been exposed to much joy. I make the beds with the intention of providing a clean, calm healing space for people. But it is not an adrenaline driven attempt to compensate. It is sufficient to smooth down the sheets, to put a small bouquet of flowers on their night stand.

And I am able to let more energy in. I pick up the money and thank the person in my mind. I touch the little note the couple has left me and think of how beautiful they are. I put the present someone left me in front of my Buddha on my altar. And as I sit at breakfast with a beautiful, strong dance professional, I think that I am finally learning that trying to control, measure and monitor the exchange of love is a mugs’ game.

We are in an energy dance and sometimes I lift up others and sometimes they lift me up. The choreography is perfect.

The Delusion of Sameness

We get on up onto the back of a new day with the expectation energy of continuity. This new day will be a continuation of yesterday and the previous days. It is not difficult to understand how this deadening of the specificity occurs.

I step out of the same bed, on the same side, with the same leg and stand exactly as I have done countless days before. But it is a lie the numbed down mind tells me.

There is a taste, a smell, a texture, an over riding theme to each day to each passing hour that distinguishes it from all others. The weather alone is the most predominant marker. As the sky opens it may bring in sun or fist clamp down again on grayness. The wind may tear limbs off of the tree or refuse to give relief to over ranging heat.

But as we move in closer there are so many variables that it is like looking minutely at a woven piece of fabric. The day is an interaction. I am in a mood, or in a frame of mind. Associations with neighbours, friends, family may shift me.
Viewing in an unmindful manner some political news that distresses me may change my internal barometer in a shattering second.

And yet we are asked, “How is your day?” Others inquire, “How is your day going?”

You will order levitra devensec.com definitely see the results after few months. Herbal treatments include supplements cialis levitra generika which naturally stimulate the body. The act of writing down your goals creates cialis soft tabs a stronger commitment and thus motivates action. This order viagra overnight is done to prevent the provisions of the drug by the laws that now exist. I learned a great deal watching You Tube videos from practiced meditators about allowing for negative space. It is a created geography of simply not knowing, not judging, not expecting, not naming. When we hold a negative space within it is very positive. It means we can simply experience moment to moment without having to catch it with a butterfly net, stick a pin through it, put it on a board and label it.

“How was yesterday?,” I might ask myself.

It was a flowing intersection of various energies, expectations, weather systems and it was mostly sunny.

Today held moments of rain. And finally, that is all we get. We get moments. An event shows up like the neighbours’ cat at my back door rubs on the threshold and then disappears again.

This now not judged holds a peaceful sanctuary. It is free of expectation which means it is free of disappointment. I do not own it. It does not own me.

I remember that the birds sang and I heard the rain’s waterfall through the trees. I could not have been better, done more, been more perfect or been more flawed. I just lived what ever this day was.

And I don’t need to find out its Latin name.

The Opening…Finding New Energy

I open my eyes and my first reaching out of the night numbness is to assess the day. I hear birds already at their posts in the trees calling out in a language I am not comprehending. Their tone suggests living as usual. Before a big storm, the neighbourhood crows are insistent, nagging, harsh. But today there was no need for alarm.

The cool breeze coming in my window lifts the blackout curtain and touches the parts of my body that are unwrapped from the blanket. I know that I have some stage unknown to myself wherein I shift from my self comforting fetal position on to my back when I know I am about to release the day. I will move to my left side my knees drawn up, two clasped hands touching my mouth. It is probably some memory of self comfort thumb sucking from infancy.

The morning inevitably finds me flat on my back, spread out and floating on whatever segment of dream I still feel solidly. And then it is swept away with the rest of the night’s visions leaving me only with the tonality, the theme music of the narrative journey.

The day is cool, sunny, the birds are content and busy with their mating and nesting.

Next, I run my mind gently over the house… tracing the shape of it. I feel out to the walls that enclose me… It is almost a ritual reconstruction of the domicile sanctuary daily. The ritual of making my home actual.

I ask, “Who is here?” When 160 people have passed through the house nightly in four months, it takes some effort to re-inhabit the bedrooms downstairs.

Lavender along the walk way

The wonder of my life in the last five months is the very gentleness of it. My transition to waking is soft. As I stand on the floor, I have a sense of purpose. I have guests to make coffee for, to chat with and if they are gone I have rooms to prepare. The garden is flourishing under the habit of care I have established.

Many people lately have told me I have never looked better and it surprises me. I am so uninterested in how I appear to others, it is almost shocking when somebody makes a comment. It feels like they are noticing a coat I am wearing that I don’t remember putting on.

After almost ten years of retreat, mourning, study, plant medicine, writing, sitting with teachers I feel that I am ready to live. The sense that something was wrong with me that has haunted me most of my life is gone. The sense of “me” is gone. I am only an energy of exploration. I am only a “bundle of habits” as my teachers have explained to me. Most of the day there is just flow, work, thought, learning.

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After decades of struggling in the spider web and hearing a voice off screen yelling to just lay still, I get it. There is a way to escape and it is not through work, worry, wasting attention. I feel like one of those birds in the tree outside my window teetering on the edge of the nest.

peace

It is time to fly and let the air take me. But first I have a garden to weed. I can finally say, “I wake up happy.”