Sometimes I take morning walks. Down the sidewalk, past a garbage truck and flowers, stepping slowly, remembering myself as a presence in the morning, a kind of meditation. I feel stronger these days, but I also wake up with a sense of non-feeling, where my body feels like a shell, being held to confront others rather than to be with them. Let yourself feel I say, as I move through the open space of a sunny intersection. And a twinge of sadness flows in with the bright colors of the day, gentle and sweet. I continue to step, turn left where I enter the park, to go around the great field, and I remember the place of receiving. The blood body, a teacher at a movement workshop called it.. A trusting place, where your body softens and one allows the world to come through. Walking in this tender place I pass a lone tree, in the grass next to the community center, with sparse deep forest green and crinkled leaves. And a symbol comes that has spoken to me for years: the tree in the clearing. This image has always held a sense of magic for me that I didn’t understand. But today the world whispers, look they are all trees in clearings. Here the trees push up through sod, some small and propped and tagged with orange plastic around their feeble fingers, between their round leaves. These line the path. Beyond them a great being with a wide speckled trunk and a top that explodes rests next to the tennis court. Clumped, cramped, but each one rising up into its space of air, matter asserting itself into where-it-was-not. They are all trees in clearings, surrounded by the nada. I pass each one and the symbol begins to whisper to my conscious understanding: each is life, the body of the earth, dark and teeming, mysteriously arising from itself into this great intricate shape, soil and air joining to differentiate into rough grey bark, shapen leaves, veins, and branches, I cannot speak of the livingness of the tree. Intricacy from simplicity, the story of every form. I walk through the wet grass of a clump of pines and continue to the sidewalk, receiving them. Nature lives in the city. Let yourself fall into that place of receiving, your own softness. See how she chooses to speak to you, what secrets she will reveal.
Undepressing/Allowing Joy
I've felt depression for a long time. I remember the moment I chose it freshman year of college when I just didn't want to take responsibility for my life anymore. I'm finally ready to say, this is enough. This blog is my commitment to living with joy. It's really easy to feel scared in this world, but there is a lot of joy here if we are willing to open to what this earth has to give us! I'll post the little ways we can add more joy to our lives. I hope you can commit to finding your own joy!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Monday, October 31, 2011
#8: Let others inspire you, meditate, believe in yourself
We undeniably have mental habits of seeing ourselves in the world. When I awake in the morning I awake into an attitude, a tone of self. I notice the light on my white walls, coax myself into my body, this is a habit too. I may awake feeling fresh, or cloudy, like the sky. These are states, they turn like the light, but there is something underneath turning too. Pervasive modes of being from which one confronts the world. I may always turn my leaves from the sun.
Or: the sense of oneself as a static thing, the thread of the tapestry rather than the weaver. Depression, I have come to understand, is this loss of agency, the asking of oneself over and over again, what kind of thread am I? And thus remaining, perpetually, a collection of loose, god-given, strings.
I see myself and others like this a lot. I often feel inadequate when someone around me excels at something. When someone cooks more delicious food, or makes keener observations. This is to know oneself and others as objects. I, with my faculties, weave a life of worry, of competition. I see nothing and hear nothing. This way of being hurts. I am always failing, always not good enough.
Last night I drank and smoked and we danced wildly to music. And something allowed me just too see. To calm my mind enough to feel a friend’s perspective when he spoke. He was being analytic, he was listening to the world. Normally I would judge myself, the track would run, why am I so introspective, why have I not listened. But something allowed me to say, it is beautiful that he sees that way. And in doing so I remembered that I too have a mind, to use to perceive instead of fret. We know our faculties through their use, the same red thread in you and me can look like a scientist in one and a writer in another. The world is the weaving.
This morning I arise restless. I sit to meditate, without conviction, I don’t remember deciding. But in sitting, my knowing from last night returns to me in full body. I see him being and he inspires me. I see her cooking and she inspires me.
And I understand. When we see others as weavers it reminds us of our capacity to weave. It is my mind that appreciates his, my sensuality that ignites when I feel hers in use. To appreciate another is to allow them to inspire you, to allow them to light your core, to have you know you and them and beyond because you feel what is in you is also in them. It is only known through use. Through feeling the weaver through the weave.
I am sitting at a picnic table in my backyard. It is dusk, the air is chilly, water trickles in the soundscape. My spine erect, I can feel my core. A sense of agency changes my body. Suddenly I am integral, a strong trunk, capable of meeting the world as it turns. To begin to see and hear the world without trying to grasp it is like receiving oxygen after holding one’s breath for a long time. It is a challenge to feel people as they are. This will hurt too sometimes.
A short morning meditation usually brings me answers like this, as does letting oneself go once in awhile, to drinking or whatever else I don’t normally do.
I must add a caveat: sometimes I know the best thing to do is to let the worries flow. We cannot always listen. Insights once woven become threads, to be strung and restrung into new weaves. They cannot prescribe for the mind. But the body remembers. The feeling of standing strong in one’s core is the knowledge of having loom in hand, thread in hand, a being in and creating of the world. It is physically believing in yourself.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
#7: Think of the people you care about
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
#6: Watch the birds
Sunday, October 16, 2011
#5: Walk Barefoot in Wet Grass
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
#4: Move freely
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
#3: Talk to People!
He had a lot of other wisdom too:
The most important thing in a relationship is for the two people to be able to communicate with each other.
Trust your intuition to know if you are wronging someone.
Homeless people know a lot because they've lived it, not just read about it.
You must love yourself before you can love another.
I told him he was dressed nice and was wise.
He said I was pretty and mature.
We both admitted we had trouble accepting complements but were working on it. We were both working on self-love. He asked for my number but I declined. We said a friendly good bye.
Talk to people. It doesn't mean you need to give them anything beyond that conversation. Be ready to say no and walk away if the talk goes anywhere you don't want it to. I always used to be afraid of talking to people because I thought they wanted something from me. Now I know what I'm prepared to give. If you know your boundaries unexpected people can have important messages for you and you can share a little joy together! Random people have true things to offer each other if we're open in the right way.