The Gurly Life

It's not perfect, but it will do

I recently have added a 10 minute meditation to my daily routine. It's a two-birds-with-one-stone kinda deal because I meditate in Virasana (aka Hero's Pose), which helps with my right knee and ankle, which are stiff and don't like to bend this way.

I close my eyes or pick a spot to focus my gaze. Within seconds, Maliboo Kitty comes along, chirping and purring. She rubs her face and head against my knees, and plops her head in my hands. I give her a little skritch, hoping it will satisfy her. She throws herself on the ground, rolls around for a bit, purrs, then comes back, meowing. If I ignore her, which I try to do, she will stand up on her hind legs, lean on my arm with a front paw, and pat me on the face with her other paw. Meowing and chirping and purring.

Finally, I pick her up, put her on my lap, to her utter joy, and continue my meditation while scratching her chin, with the occasional chirp and meow.

On second thought, maybe it is perfect after all.

Time for another workshop

A couple of years ago I took two tremendously helpful workshops by PAX Programs. At the time, I took their Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women workshop, and their Celebrating Men & Sex workshop. Both were extremely useful and revealing. Lots of "Oh! I get it now!" moments. Lots. I don't pretend for a moment to fully understand men, but I am not as lost as I once was.

PAX offers a couple more programs. One is what they affectionately call the Queen Course. The final course, and the one I'm told is absolutely the most useful of all is Celebrating Men & Marriage. I will be taking that one, too. It is time for more clarity. Landmark Education got me a good deal of the way to where I need to be in terms of relationships and men, but not all the way. And as you know, doing more of the same thing expecting a different result is for the birds.

So now that I am clear that I need more clarity (sometimes you don't see the fog for the trees, to butcher a hackneyed metaphor), I am interested in these two courses. So instead of taking a Hawaii vacation, I will do these workshops and take little trips to visit friends that I do not see nearly often enough. That means you, Deirdre and Travelvixen. I'm not really in the mood for a vacation, anyway.

I will be taking the Queen course the weekend of May 14, by the way, which sadly means I will miss the artichoke festival in Castroville (thistle be fun!).

Some books

In an effort to put my money where my mouth is, I have purchased some books that I think will put me on the path to exploring spirituality. I recently wrote a post about prayer, inspired by listening to an episode of NPR's Speaking of Faith (which I highly recommend and will plug at every conceivable opportunity). One of the guests on the show I referred to was translator Stephen Mitchell, who has translated a number of sacred texts. I now have in my hands The Gospel According To Jesus, Tao Te Ching, and Bhagavad Gita. Currently, I do not have any thoughts about these books, but no doubt you'll hear more about them. I was browsing through the Tao and found some beautiful passages. Now to only remember what the hell they said. Something about peace and freedom from desires. Ha. That's a laugh. But I can certainly strive for it.

Discovering prayer

One of the areas of my life that is almost totally unexplored is spirituality and prayer. In part, this is because I have an irrational prejudice against religion in general, and pretty much all Christian religions in particular, to varying degrees. I won't go into that because that's another soapbox for another day. But I associate prayer with Christianity, and the thought of praying, therefore, makes me gag. I know, right?

Anyway. I think that perhaps I'm throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It occurs to me that prayer is not limited to praying to the Judeo-Christian god to save us from gay marriage, far from it.

I've been listening to a fantastic NPR program, called Speaking of Faith (honestly, I recommend you check it out, it's enlightening) and the December 31, 2009 broadcast was titled Approaching Prayer. The host, Krista Tippet, spoke to with the musician Anoushka Shankar ("If you look at the whole language of Sanskrit, I think it's the only language in the world maybe apart from Latin where like the vibration of the way the words sound is equally as important as what you're saying."), translator Stephen Mitchell ("A mathematician working at a problem or a little kid trying to pick out scales on the piano is a person of prayer."), and theologian Roberta Bondi ("Any reason to begin a pattern of prayer is a good reason because prayer is about everyday life. It isn't the great spiritual mystery that is too high and lofty for the likes of us.").

Their perspectives really opened up the universe of prayer for me. So once again, I embark upon an exploration of spirituality.

Here is a free-form translation of a Psalm IV composed by Mitchell, which I thought was beautiful and powerful.

"Even in the midst of great pain, Lord, I praise you for that which is. I will not refuse this grief or close myself to this anguish. Let shallow men pray for ease: 'Comfort us; shield us from sorrow.' I pray for whatever you send me, and I ask to receive it as your gift. You have put a joy in my heart greater than all the world's riches. I lie down trusting the darkness, for I know that even now you are here."

I was also quite fascinated by the recordings, from Chants Of India (Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar, who is his daughter).

You can read the transcript of the program by clicking on the link of the episode above, where you can also download it for free. Or you can listen here:

On rain and peace

Yesterday it rained and rained. And then after it was done raining, it rained some more. Oddly, I love driving in the rain. It's a mini-adventure and my own safe little cocoon at the same time. I know it's not all that safe, especially here in LA where people aren't very adept at driving in the rain, but it feels like it is. It was more tiring than a Friday should be, but in a good way.

This morning I went to the doctor to get my cough checked out and he said the lungs are all clear, and that irritation in the lungs is common for a few weeks after bronchitis. He did not pump me full of meds, bless his heart.

This afternoon I spent listening to attorneys drone on about something or other. It was a workshop where we were supposed to learn some stuff. I learned a little, but not as much as I think I should in 4 hours. It didn't help that I was basically unconscious part of the time, or that the chairs were beyond uncomfortable. Ivy was there too, which made it easier.

After, we drove to old town Pasadena and had dinner at a Tibetan restaurant called Tibet Nepal House. The place is airy and peaceful, and the chef's first name is Karma. By the time we drove there we were hungry, and I was grumpy going on bitchy. I had lots of things to say to Ivy at that point, none of which were particularly pleasant, but all of which I felt needed to be said. But suspecting that all those things were the product of whacked out brain chemistry from lack of food, I managed to limit myself to whining about how far the place was. Once I started eating, of course, all the nasty things I had to say lost their significance, and I can't remember any of them now.

The moment we walked in, actually, my energy shifted dramatically. The restaurant is painted white, with high ceilings, and of course there's all sorts of Tibetan and Nepalese objects. Lovely peaceful music played, and a sense of calm and peace and harmony. Talk about an access to my feminine energy! I need to find out if there's a Tibetan center that has meditation groups or something.

This was my first experience with Tibetan/Nepalese food, and I'm not sure which I ate. But the food is very fragrant without being spicy or heavy. Delicious and uplifting. And Tibetan ice tea is yummy, too, it's slightly sweet and a little bit like Kombucha but milder in flavor.

Attached to the roof are a bunch of feet with various writings on it, some say things like "Love and Kindness," some have drawings, and most I couldn't read because they were too high up. Here's a photo of one of the feet

 

You can see a wider shot of the feet here.

We didn't have much time to have dinner because we had tickets to see Coraline in 3D, but oddly, the time seemed to stretch out and we were not at all in a hurry. I also recommend Coraline (in 3D!), it's visually a treat, and it's a good movie.

There are more exciting things coming up this weekend, and I will blog about those after the fact. So stay tuned for further adventures.

A yoga experience

This morning I went to yoga. Nothing new about that, of course, except that my wrist is improving, but my hip is troubling me again. This time, it's hurting in the back of the hip bones, so it feels like lower back pain. But I can tell it's from the hip. Anyway, I'll have to deal with that, too, I guess.

On the way home, I had the strangest experience. Well, maybe "strange" is not the word for it. I was driving home and all of a sudden I had a very clear experience of being connected to everything in the universe. Sort of a right brain thing, I guess, but to explain a little more: if you've ever seen the fabulous "What the Bleep Do We Know," one of the ideas they explore is that at the quantum level, there is no distinction between things. In other words, in our every-day reality world, we can clearly see, feel, and define the beginning and end of each object or being. The boundaries of physical objects are clear and finite. No two objects can be in the same physical space, and no object can be in more than one place at once.

Now, I don't claim to fully understand this, but apparently at the quantum level (we're talking subatomic), these rules don't apply. So there is no clear distinction between one object and the next, and particles can be in more than one place simultaneously. At the quantum level, everything is connected and a butterfly flapping its wings in China causing a hurricane half way across the world makes perfect sense.

That's the experience I had this morning - like there was no separateness between myself and all things and beings. It only lasted for a few seconds, and I still had the awareness of physical separateness (thank goodness, it would have otherwise been difficult to drive!), but it was very moving. Moving, and sad. I suddenly felt the suffering of people and animals, and the numbness.

Then, just as quickly, it was gone.

The end of suffering? Some random thoughts.

I’m reading an interesting book, you’ve probably heard of it: “A new earth” by Eckhart Tolle. It was one of Oprah’s Book Club picks. I must say that the other couple of books I read that she recommended were excellent (damn it!), plus my friend Liza also said I should read this. So here I am, reading it at last, and here's what I'm getting from it so far.

It’s all about how the ego runs us and is the cause of suffering and hate and war, and on a microlevel is also preventing us from having real relationships. There’s another aspect to the book, which has to do with transcending the ego into the next evolutionary leap for humanity. Oh, yes, it’s that big a deal, according to Tolle.

At this point, I would normally tell you what I think of the book, but it seems to me that that would actually be missing the point of what Tolle is trying to say/teach. The book is intended to be an experiential, not an intellectual, journey for the reader.

For those of us who have been on a journey of self-discovery and expansion for a while, it’s not revolutionary, but it does access a new realm of self-awareness: the self which hears itself speak and think and react, the observing eye.

If I have thoughts, feelings, reactions, things to say etc., and I can observe myself doing and thinking and speaking, who is the observer? The observer is the true self. The true self who notices how my mind is never still, who listens to its thoughts without assigning meaning or significance to them, and who can listen to others without assigning meaning or significance to what they say. The true self who notices how other people, events, conversations etc. set me off but can simply allow the reactions to occur on their own, without acting on them. The true self who knows and can see all the filters and interpretations that inform everything I say or do or hear or see, without making myself wrong for having such filters, or others wrong for having such filters.

Much of what Tolle says is aligned with a number of Landmark distinctions. Not the same, but aligned. Landmark’s paradigm is educational, Tolle’s is spiritual. They fit well together. And Tolle’s ideas fit well with yoga – I can really begin to see an opening into spirituality in yoga that I have not seen so far. In yoga, I’ve been practicing being in my body, rather than being in my mind. Obviously, that’s the same thing, the mind is part of the body, but the focus of the mind differs. Going into my head separates and isolates me, it makes me sad and lonely. Going into my body connects me to all things, makes me one with all things and living creatures, loneliness and sadness are irrelevant.