Let Go

 One thing I've noticed while meditating. When I'm thinking -  I hold my body much more, it's a lot more tense, particularly in my shoulders. Suddenly , when I notice I'm thinking, I am able to direct my awareness to my shoulders...and let them drop, let them go. And then - I feel my thighs resting on the chair -  and I am IN my body for a few split seconds. Wow! It's like a revelation! To feel all the tension release, even for a moment, relax my breathing lengthen my spine...like I've often read  the Barefoot Doctor explain, (who BTW is ill, and we're sending him best wishes of a speedy recovery). And then a few seconds later...I'm in my head again.

The other day I was tense, worried. My 85 year old Mom decided she's driving to a local mall to meet a friend. Problem is she has dementia, still in very early stages , but it isn't getting better. She refused to have her live-in companion go with her. There was nothing I could do, except make sure she knows the way. Please call me when you get there, I asked. Of course, she didn't, she forgot. And she wasn't answering her cell, which was probably in her bag.

I'm pacing around, anxious, thinking of ways to reach her, calling the cafe' she's supposed to be at and suddenly my almost 11 year old son comes up and  says to me, Ima- you need to let go.

Let Go? How can I let go? Byron Katie often says: Can you let go when it's not available to you? Is that true that it's possible?

But he's right in a way. Maybe another word for it is trust. Trust the Universe  to keep this big ball we're on turning and moving us all in the direction we're supposed to...
I let go. I directed my attention to places I can actually DO something, like my work, even though I'm frustrated there, and no matter how many good tips I read from Jim's Marketing Blog, or read Seth's Blog or  watch all these amazing creative people on the net that I admire like Melissa Dwindle launch great ideas, I still seem to not BREAKTHOUGH.

Still, relatively, it's a place where I have some sense of control.

An hour later- my Mom called to say she's home...

So, How do you let go?

Looking Into Your Eyes

Looking into your eyes

I see the eternal
The child
The Innocence
the love, the vulnerability
the love, the pain
the pure , the joyful
the longing
to love
to be loved

Looking into your eyes
They are the eyes of everyone I meet
I see
In this world
In my life

I meet you everyday
I meet me in You
The eternal
The One
Some call it God

Thank you for reflecting
Everything
I need to know
To Learn
To be
Peace

To Rest

Today I'm resting. I'm going to pretend that I'm sick, because that was the only way I was allowed to stay at home when I was little, and well, now my inner parent is still keeping that up...

I'm going to stay in bed.
Have breakfast in bed, which I just made for myself
Read
Talk
Sleep, a lot
Rest

A few days ago, I was having a terrible morning.

We were late for school and my daughter was still standing in front of the mirror and brushing her hair. "Yasmin... let's go we're late.." Yes yes just a second"
 Finally, I blew up!
" I'm leaving!" I shout.
 Suddenly it's all fire inside , in my body. Like a terrible fire that is out of control..

We finally make it to school. Standing in the parking area, kissing and hugging her goodbye, because I do not want to part in an argument, I catch sight of a friend, I wave . She comes close : " How are you?" I smile: S-it I say.  So, why are you smiling? she asks. "It's my default" and tears come up. What is it? I make a movement with my hands like a huge mountain in front of me. " Everything's too big, huh?" I nod and fall into her big hug and burst into tears.

"Yael, you've go to rest," she continues. "You do so much. You don't stop, you must find some rest!"

Back home I reflect on how hurried I am in everything. Even eating. I eat a sandwich I can barely sit still, there's so much tension in my body...

Even meditation and yoga are a chore that must be done.

How to rest? How to find relaxation during the day when I find myself so rigid so tight?
Well, they say awareness is the beginning, and I find I have made progress in the last year and a half, yet still, there's a long way to go...

Would love to hear, how do you rest? How do people relax?

p.s. Last night I watched "Julie and Julia". The movie about the writer Julie Powell who got famous for writing a blog about the year she spent making every single recipe from Julia Child's " Mastering The Art of French Cooking". Great film, that also tells the story of two great ladies and their relationships and their passion, their creativity and one-mindedness but more than anything I was inspired by watching the special feature in the DVD about how the movie was made. I noticed that the two key figures that made this film, the producer and the director, were women, and I was inspired by that... a film about two women, by women, not to mention the great Meryl Streep.
And of course, there was a lot of love in all of it
 How empowering is that?

How to Heal?

My Face Is Smiling, But I am Not

 This must have been one of the worst let downs in my life.

Oh yeah I've had plenty.
Lots of unrequited love.
Early crushes unspoken. A falling in love in my early years, 18 to be precise, that ended a year and a half later in desertion, and haunted me for years and years until that fateful meeting in Central Park just near Strawberry Fields, meeting him with his wife...
Men disappearing from my life.

Yet this last one hurts now, more than before, and what comes up is a sense of betrayal of trust that runs deeper. Maybe because of the process I'm going through, of opening up, of being more connected to my feelings than before,  maybe because he helped me BE in the moment and also say what's going on for me. That split second of intimacy, that closeness, is what lingers for me. It was a moment of being seen and heard.

And then , the next day- cut. Gone.

I know it's not because of me. I know he has his issues. He didn't mean to hurt me. He's just answering his own needs. I know I set myself up from the start. Maybe my choice of partners is poor- some will say that it's my soul's journey, that there's a lot more unknown than known...

All of this may be true - it just hurts hurts so bad. And feels alone, probably more alone than I have ever felt and there has been a lot of alone-ness in my life.

How to heal? How to trust again?

Your thoughts are welcome.

Love Is The Fertilizer

In my Meditation this morning I felt, as I feel very often, this big pain in my forehead, the place where all the thinking goes on. So I looked at it. I heard myself say, go go get out! And then saw an image of little me and this huge black something, with no specific shape.  Little me is trying her hardest to push it out. Tremendous, strenuous effort, and it ain't budging.

And then I remembered the teachings, of greeting those thoughts, those pains, as one would greet a guest.  We would receive them in a nice way, offer them some refreshment, and we know, they're here now, and they're leaving, eventually. And I also remembered , that Love is the best fertilizer, the best   "force" one can use. So I started caressing that big thing, and poof, like in a cartoon, it was gone.

How can I bring that love into all areas of my life? Clearly, I can do it when I feel energized, relaxed happy, well, happy-ish, but- what happens when I'm depleted, tired, feeling lonely and just wishing for some relief?
Where and from what can I get renewed? I meditate, yes, I do some exercise in the morning, I write, and these things are beneficial, and yet-

Something's lacking.

The other day I saw a fantastic film, called : "My Afternoon's With Margueritte" , a French film starring Gerard Depardieu. It's a moving, inspiring movie about a man who all his life has been the village idiot, suffering endless laughter and scorn from his surroundings and his single mother. But he's a big guy with a big heart, and has a beautiful young girlfriend who sees the beauty in him, an amazing vegetable garden that he lives off and sells produce from - and one day he meets a 95 year old lady in the village square - and this meeting transforms him...or rather, reveals to him, how special he is. She's a  former scientist that loves to read - and so their meetings go, she reads, he listens. She points out what a great reader he is. To which he answers : What do you mean? I can't read! She answers , you LISTEN so well and that is just as good.

I won't tell you the rest.... but I will say that it is a movie that brings back faith in each of our individual uniqueness- how we all have our own style of growing, learning and loving. And the message is yes, that Love is the best fertilizer there is, the only power that can move even the blackest and darkest moments.

I wept at the end, literally. Go see it

Consistent, Linear....Or?

 leaf illustration

 
It's been over ten days since I posted on this blog.. I read somewhere: Don't give excuses , be responsible.

Woke up with the word : Consistency in my head.
Saying to myself, look: You've never been consistent with anything! You lack discipline, you lack routine you lack consistency! Perhaps I'm being harsh with myself?

So looked it up in the Merriam Webster dictionary:

1. Firmness or constitution of character: persistency
2. Agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole : correspondence; specifically : ability to be asserted together without contradiction

Ha!

My experience of myself is that I am always in contradiction with myself, never in harmony or agreement,  and that I lack firmness. Well, there you go.

Saying to myself, look: You've never been consistent with anything! You lack discipline, you lack routine you lack consistency! Perhaps I'm being harsh with myself? (THAT I'm consistent with, by the way  (-: )

Except in my Motherhood, at least when they were young, I was consistent in my parenting beliefs. And I'm consistent as a mother - as if there's a choice. I'm consistent as a seeker, as a person who looks inward and continuously strives to be  a better person.

What  does it really mean to me?

Lately, being with myself, in the process of creating my last piece, I had the opportunity to look, to notice more , non-judgmentally. I noticed I work in circles, or rather spirals...it was so clear...and it was  something I got validation for from reading how other people work. And, God knows, life isn't linear, the universe isn't linear...is it?

Why should I be? 

Looked up that word too...I give it to you here:
 
 (1) : of, relating to, resembling, or having a graph that is a line and especially a straight line : straight (2) : involving a single dimension b (1) : of the first degree with respect to one or more variables (2) : of, relating to, based on, or being linear equations, linear differential equations, linear functions, linear transformations, or linear algebra c (1) : characterized by an emphasis on line (2) : composed of simply drawn lines with little attempt at pictorial representation d : consisting of a straight chain of atoms
2: elongated with nearly parallel sides — see leaf illustration (I give it to you above)
3: having or being a response or output that is directly proportional to the input
4: of, relating to, or based or depending on sequential development
What I found funny was that the first known use of the word was circa 1656. Funny, no? And the leaf illustration! Wow! Last thing I would think about leaves is that they are linear!
And maybe more interesting or meaningful to me was that in both definitions, there is no mention of Time... these words and how they relate to time.

 Anyway I'm rambling...the day is moving along and I better start moving with it...a house to be cleaned, and the rest of my life to be lived, whether in spirals, lines, consistent or in-consistently!

"Fixing a hole...fixing me"

 "Life is not a problem, what we believe about life is the problem" Byron Katie

 "I'm fixing a hole where the rain comes in, and stops my mind from wondering, where it will go...." Lennon- McCartney

Woke up at 5 am . Bad dream, a loud noise. And the instance I woke up- panic sets in. Couldn't get back to sleep. Lying there for half an hour paralyzed, and finally, I get up, go to the living room and do the only thing I know can help in these situations. Write.

(How is it that these moments give birth to writing? mmmmmm)

I sat and wrote three pages of all my suffering in that moment. All my fears , pain , judgments of myself. How I cannot move myself forward. Here I am , just past my 49th birthday, and what have I achieved? No steady stream of income, spending all the money I got from the sale of the apartment I owned, money only going out, not in...how I'm doing too much at the same time: studies, two businesses that are not taking off and on and on and on. I put it all down...and then did the The Work on the sentence:

"I should be making a living"...which ends with :

Who would I be, how would I be without the thought: " I should be earning a living" and I'm not?

Definitely less stressed.

Suddenly snapped out of the bad mood, did my Chi-qong/Yoga routine, then 15 minute meditation,  summoned all my resources...and you know what? I had a fruitful day...checked things off my list.

 Later, a seed I sowed half a year ago suddenly popped out of the ground... met a woman who may invite me to speak about Empathy in front of a group of English/Anglo Saxon women.  I have a sale at the end of the week of my metalwork at a big event,  and I am joining a co-op of crafts- women and artists, in a town adjacent to mine where I will be able to sell straight to the public with no go betweens... not to mention that a piece of mine is in a gallery in Paris! So really, objectively...things ARE moving and are definitely not static...so why the panic? Could it be a conversation I had yesterday in which a friend showed me in numbers how I am throwing money away by renting instead of buying an apartment? Maybe I was just ripe for some stress....

So it's 1030 pm...the day is coming to a close, kids in bed, I'm at the computer, a bunny rabbit hopping around the living room, rain falling outside, freshening up the air - all is well...

"And it really doesn't matter, if I'm wrong I'm right, where I belong I'm right, where I belong!"
Lennon- McCartney