Love. 2012. Love. Life.

January 1st, 2012

A close friend of mine recently told me that I would end up a lonely old cow if I continued to dabble with love in forbidden places. She cursed me and told me no good would come of what I was doing. “What does she know anyway”, I asked myself, before dismissing her wrath in the knowledge that I was in a different space; balanced again and sure of what I want. But she is a friend whose judgement I shouldn’t question. Another friend had something quite different to say about love and breakups. “You wake up one day and it’s over and every morning you wake up with that pain and that longing”, she lamented, “… until one morning you wake up and there’s someone else in your bed.” And apparently, according to her, you’re over the heartbreak hurdle … just like that! Someone else hinted at the metaphorical pissing on trees that guys tend to do. And then there’s the friend who won’t rest until she’s found me a sponsor with Love Addicts Anonymous. Anonymous? yeah, right.

Everyone has an opinion and I’ve listened to them all … ‘yawn’ … but lately I have been very selective about who I go to for advice because what I am told hasn’t suited the idealist in me even though I can’t deny the validity in what they have to say.

‘So what is it they have to say?’ you want to know. They tell me that the clandestine nature of a relationship deprives me of my ability to live life with the full breadth of who I am. They say that I am incapable of being in love with one man while playing the field with others. They tell me they still see my vulnerability despite my protestations that I’m fine. But mainly they assert that I don’t know how to do these things in half-measures. My friends know that I can’t open my heart just a crack without leaking my love all over the pavement, but they also know that I want to believe in love above all things and that I would sacrifice my soul for the chance of just a taste of its sweet nectar.

‘So where does that leave me now?’ you ask. Well, going nowhere … and slowly. But in a good way.

I sit here with the foetal scan of a new year, on the cusp of my practical and my most idealistic selves, breathing possibility into the promise of new life. I used to feel ashamed of the idealist side of my nature until I realized we all have a bit of the optimist and the romantic in us; we all strive for a future that is an improvement of our past and whenever we do that, we gloss over the practicalities that threaten to get in the way. Memories become a gossamer haze and we tend to move forward with a view of a future that often contains a fantasy that has wiped clean the slate of past experience. Why else would people give birth again, why else would children climb trees after falling out and adults get back on the motorbike once the metal plates have been removed? Pain fades. And that’s the truth.

2011 saw love rip holes in my chest and my old adage, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you want to die’ seemed always more appropriate than the one ending in ‘stronger’ … although they do say a break heals stronger than the bone. This is encouraging. But I’m prepared to get back on the horse in 2012. I’m willing to take my RDA of pessimism and settle for something a little more normal for now. We live in an era of questioning the institution of marriage, monogamy and heterosexual couplings and a time when polyamory and commitment phobe feature in regular conversation. But I’m going to stop thinking so much this year. Instead I am just going to feel. I’m going to give up the battle of head vs heart and focus on my body. It’s doable, right?

Trust was my word for last year – it still is – but for 2012 I have chosen the symbol of the snake, Ouroboros, for its representation of the perpetual cyclic renewal of life. I’m going to leave things be for a while and let life take care of itself. I’m tired of metaphorical challenges and I’m done climbing mountains unless they’re made of solid rock. I say it every year and I’ll say it again … hell, why not … ‘This year’s going to be different.’

Own it. Love it. Live it. Here’s to 2012.

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From Rollercoasters to Rapids

December 19th, 2011

When a friend of mine found it hard to believe that I had been the victim of verbal abuse, I couldn’t explain it … or I wouldn’t explain it … or perhaps I didn’t know how to. While I was deep in meditation, noble silence and general bodily pain, I had extracted in these operations this piece of my pathology and, as the springs sprung out of my head and it felt like I would be the one this time to be escorted off the property and medicated, it was a tough one for me to process, having always defined myself as a strong, self-assured woman. Struggling to identify with this part of myself, a friend explained that it isn’t so much the words as the intention to undermine, emotionally withhold and make the other person feel like they deserve it. It isn’t so much the verbal as it is the non-verbal that constitutes verbal abuse.

So I did what I advise all people not to do when driven by a need to self-diagnose … I Googled it. As I consider the ripples of this post, I must confess to a very long alternate document with a ream of words, explanations and websites to try and fully explain what it feels like to be a strong woman at the mercy of a controlling partner. But I looked again at the Paulo Coelho quote from the previous post and concluded that his simply stated truth applies here, and having to justify, prove and defend only makes me seem more crazy than I can rightly take credit for.

You’ve got Google. So use it if you dare. And while you search and sift and read the parts relevant to you alone, I will continue to process … and “with a calm and equanimous mind” I will embrace that I have moved and shifted and that even while the sediment is settling in my ever-flowing river, the law of nature dictates that nothing is permanent and the rapids will come once more. And the waterfalls with throw me off my feet. But there will be calm again too.

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All in a Letter

December 5th, 2011

I have survived Buddha’s Boot camp only to find myself preparing for battle. I have gone from Meditation to Mediation, that one little ‘t’ representing two concepts that are worlds apart yet strangely complimentary. Mind over matter doesn’t get me what I want but it sure helps me not sweat it for more than a few minutes before letting it go … even though we have effectively turned Marital Art into a Martial Art and I find myself searching for an appropriate place in the divorce agreement to insert something that disallows shouting out of context. I also search through the division of assets and wonder where the column is that indicates the division of friends. It seems the wake of his contact with mutual friends is plagued with being snubbed, hung up on and, in one very puzzling case of hypocrisy, being excluded from the wedding guest list of a guy I have known for three decades who proposed to his now-ex wife while she was still married to another man.

It’s none of my business what anyone thinks of me and if my ex-to-be wants these people in the settlement, he’s welcome to them … I won’t defend myself to people who have known me for years yet make no attempt to find out how I am faring in this saga.

As Paulo Coelho says, “Don’t explain. Your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you.” So I don’t. I just continue to be my authentic self and, through my own interpretation of the truth, I get to keep the friendships of real value while he gets the duds. In terms of the settlement, however, if I can just insert that extra column, they should at least weigh up nicely against a couple of pieces of furniture. There is still a chance the friends will discover the truth and neutralize their judgment. Furniture isn’t so fickle though – it’ll still be mine.

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These boots are made for walking

November 27th, 2011

So I survived Buddha’s Bootcamp! The twelve days felt like over a month and, although I didn’t leopard crawl under fences or scale the walls, I did find myself resolutely marching beyond the course boundary to my car a couple of times – day 2 and day 7 I think … although I’m not quite sure what I was planning on doing once I reached it. My key was locked away in an undisclosed location – together with my wallet, my pen, my iPod and my phone – and I’ve never hot-wired a car before.

Noble Silence began at 7pm on the day of arrival and lasted a full ten days. Apart from the obvious No Talking, Noble Silence also means No Gesturing and No Eye Contact, as well as nothing that distracts fellow meditators, like Yoga and Jogging … protesting that I was in fact a Runner and not a Jogger left them unmoved and I was forced to be late for sittings just so I could gently disguise my brief cardio as a slightly flustered rushing. And all the banned activities (and then some …) mentioned in my previous post were clearly pointed out during orientation and written on boards that indicated the days schedule; the glaring 4am start the most obvious sign that we had clearly all lost the plot.

The things I missed most out of all the banned activities? you wonder. Probably reading … followed closely by the sexual misconduct – ten days without words is Easy compared to ten days without touch. There is perhaps good reason, therefore, that there are separate male and female dining halls, separate male and female entrances to the meditation hall and the walking paths used were separated into male and female areas by a ‘no-man’s-land’, making the long country grasses completely redundant.

Pain is now my friend! After over 120 hours of sitting in postures for up to two hours at a time, determinedly not moving while observing and working through the agony, it’s no surprise that for the first two days during sittings and instruction, I heard “With a clear and calm mind, focus on your desperation” rather than “your respiration“. And as soon as one session ended, we were told to “Take break 5 minutes then come back to dhamma hall for further instruction”, 5 minutes, approximately the amount of time it took to get just one foot working again before the next sitting … they may as well have hacked through my joints with a blunt saw. That’s when the one-legged man said, “Who’s sorry now?”

So … would I do it again? you just have to know. Hell yeah! I’ve learned Buddha’s technique of Vipassana meditation, learned to smile through torturous pain and learned not to speak … the latter, the most commendable by far. My nickname changed rapidly from Lady Penelope to Lady No Words since, according to the volunteers doing seva, I was the single soul who did not ask for anything or in fact utter a word the entire course. I kid you not! Perhaps I take things too seriously or perhaps I really did need word rehab.

So I’ve done the love. I’ve SO done the prayer. And now all I can think about is pizza. Overflowing with knowledge and understanding and a torrent of unspoken words, however, I can’t help but wonder if that makes me a good dinner date or not. I have come out of these long and mostly agonising days with real hunger – not just for pizza but for wisdom – and the thing with walking this path is that there is such a vast pool of it – wisdom, not pizza – and no end to the number of wise and intelligent gurus; from freak to straight; imparting their very own interpretation of the essence of it. Even the longest journey starts with only one step and each one doesn’t represent a different path but rather a different pair of shoes to walk it in.

With the year I’ve had so far, when I grow up I think I’m gonna be a Buddhist nun. But only if I get to keep the shhhoes …

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Shhhhh …

November 16th, 2011

I joined the gym two weeks ago and have been going for two hours a day ever since. I clearly look like the new psycho-nutter gym bunny and there’s a man who quizzes me every time I go on why I’m working so hard. “Two Oceans?” he wants to know. “Comrades?”
“No,” I said, “Vipassana.”

It’s the name of my latest challenge – my metaphorical mountain – and I leave today. I’ve had a large beer, a couple of ouzos, a chocolate binge, greasy food and my final gym session … not all of them this morning … and I’m now as ready as I’ll ever be to go into silence and meditation for a long ten days. No music, no reading, no writing, no mind-altering substances of any kind, no sexual misconduct, practically no food and definitely – absolutely! – NO talking … which obviously means no mobile phones either which, in fact, get confiscated on arrival. The discipline for the duration of the course follows a strict routine of morning bell at 4am followed by mediation sessions and lessons throughout the day, ending with compulsory lights out at 9.30pm – no objection considering the list of banned activities. People have been known to jump the fence to escape. But, like a friend of mine said, fence jumping is ok, it’s the fence sitting that’s intolerable. Another friend’s great advice was to make sure I didn’t leave anything on the fence when I jump it. Such faith.

“So what’s the point?” the man at the gym wants to know. “What do you hope to achieve?” “What’s your desired outcome?” “Nothing,” I respond, “absolutely nothing.” He’s not happy with this answer but it’s the truth; I can’t make something up just so he can make sense of it … as tempting as it is to stem his flow of questions. I choose instead to reposition the headphones in my ears and turn the volume up, shrugging when I see his lips move.

Expectation, after all, always taints the outcome. It sets you up for disappointment. There’s no success or failure on this course and just the process of doing it is an opportunity to be with a personal process that will evolve over time. If you were to press me, however, I would probably say it’s like rehab for talking. And, like everything I intuitively plan to do, it couldn’t have come at a better time. I have come to a crossroads of self-expression … I have seen with my third eye what I desire and I have opened my throat chakra and allowed my heart to flow out. The expectation gene made an appearance though and the gremlins shut me down. Yes, perfect timing. I have a chance now to contemplate what it means. Or maybe I have a chance now to just let it all go. A chance to disconnect from my words and reconnect with my body.

I tend to find passages in books at appropriate times and this morning’s reading brought the following to my attention:

“In silence, inner listening forms the bonding of heart and mind. Listening is an essential part of communication. In taking the time to be quiet, we are able to truly listen to ourselves. The chatter of the mind eventually dies down and the song of the heart pours forth. In this opening into silence, the upper and lower chakras can enter into resonance with each other, connecting mind and body.”

As I pack, I realise how little I will miss the phone, the email, the talking … but! as a grazer, it’s the lack of food that makes me most nervous. I’m sneaking a bag of almonds into my bag … think the sniffer dogs will find it? I might find the discipline when I get there not to eat them but they’re my safety blanket. Often you just want something because you can’t have it but if you can just satisfy your mind that your needs are being met, you often realise you don’t need them anymore.

If you hear from me before the 28th of November chances are I needed to jump the fence …

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