I want things. Is that okay? Is it okay to want inner peace and a really large house? Is it alright to want to reach the pinnacle of spiritual enlightenment, while driving a black Range Rover Sport with tan leather interior? I apologize to those of you who expected more from me. I am owning up. And the list doesn’t stop there. I want things. I want material things, and despite all my efforts to find zen, these desires continue to badger.
What can I say? I’m not the Dalai Lama. I can’t seem to let go of this steady stream of desire. I want shoes and handbags and brand new pots and pans. I want chiseled abs and nicer hair and someone to read this blog and offer me a book deal and maybe a stint on Oprah. I do. I want to be rich and accomplished and look beautiful while doing so. Uh huh. That’s right, I said it.
It is so easy to believe that there are conditions that are prerequisite to finding happiness. We are filled with “I can’t wait until”s and “as soon as we”s. We live in anticipation of days to come. We believe that we need certain things and perfect situations in order to be satisfied and content. But here’s the big joke. Here’s the cliché of clichés. Here is the nugget of truth that we can find on bumper stickers and in graduation speeches and hung up in frames on the walls of diners across America: “It is not about the destination. It’s about the journey.”
It is not about the destination. There is no destination. We will never reach the end. The Range Rover will rust and the abs will mush and at the end of it all we turn into dust. Nothing is permanent. Nothing will ever truly satiate us. The wanting is boundless. It’s an animal. It will always arise within us. We have to choose to find happiness and peace and deep satisfaction in the utterly unpredictable and impermanent journey that is unfolding right now. We have to choose to find contentment in the moments in between the wanting.
It is within the soft subtle breath between our desire that the marrow of life lies.
Tuesday, June 29
Monday, June 7
Spring Cleaning
Excuse me, hello? Have I lost your attention? Are you quite sick of hearing me grasp desperately at figuring it all out, arrive at hopeful conclusions, and then tumble into confusion once again? Oh really? That’s’ funny. So am I. Yet here I am once more, having another go at it.
My head is on super-speed. My thoughts fly in and out faster than I can lasso them up and get them down on paper. I’m not boasting. It’s the human condition. We spend far too much time in the administrative power house that is our brain. I suppose we need it. To, you know, function and stuff. But I think it's overrated. And I'd like to turn the damn thing off.
I need a vacation from my brain. I need it to sleep for a while whilst I run up there and clear some junk out. I need to feng shui that thing. Swifter duster it. Get rid of the old. I need to go through those dirty old file cabinets and throw some shit out. It’s time for it to go. It’s time to let it go. It is time to make room for the new. It is time to stop beating the drum of what is and start looking with new eyes at what hovers right beneath those thoughts that pound our brains.
It’s so close. We’re so close, always, to the revelation, to the paradigm shift, the “ah ha” moment. It’s that heavy file cabinet that binds us, those old thoughts and ways of behaving, the deep ruts we’ve dug ourselves into after years and years of doing it the same way, the only way we’ve known, again and again and again. And then we sing, this is how it is, this is how it is, oh woe is me, this is how it is. I say get rid of that old tune. Climb out of the rut. There are new ways. Clean, new, shiny, better ways! Stretch those legs. Get a little uncomfortable. It’s alright. It’s time. It is time. It is time for some real changes.
So get out your swifter dusters, people. Summer's just around the corner. It is time for some serious spring cleaning.
My head is on super-speed. My thoughts fly in and out faster than I can lasso them up and get them down on paper. I’m not boasting. It’s the human condition. We spend far too much time in the administrative power house that is our brain. I suppose we need it. To, you know, function and stuff. But I think it's overrated. And I'd like to turn the damn thing off.
I need a vacation from my brain. I need it to sleep for a while whilst I run up there and clear some junk out. I need to feng shui that thing. Swifter duster it. Get rid of the old. I need to go through those dirty old file cabinets and throw some shit out. It’s time for it to go. It’s time to let it go. It is time to make room for the new. It is time to stop beating the drum of what is and start looking with new eyes at what hovers right beneath those thoughts that pound our brains.
It’s so close. We’re so close, always, to the revelation, to the paradigm shift, the “ah ha” moment. It’s that heavy file cabinet that binds us, those old thoughts and ways of behaving, the deep ruts we’ve dug ourselves into after years and years of doing it the same way, the only way we’ve known, again and again and again. And then we sing, this is how it is, this is how it is, oh woe is me, this is how it is. I say get rid of that old tune. Climb out of the rut. There are new ways. Clean, new, shiny, better ways! Stretch those legs. Get a little uncomfortable. It’s alright. It’s time. It is time. It is time for some real changes.
So get out your swifter dusters, people. Summer's just around the corner. It is time for some serious spring cleaning.
Tuesday, May 11
A Noble Attempt
I’m thinking about changing my blog to “A Noble Attempt at Finding Zen.” Or maybe “Finding Zen For a Fleeting Moment…woops, I’ve Lost It.” Or even better, “Has Anyone Found Zen?! If So, Please Call 867-5309.” I’m kidding. Don’t call that number.
Finding zen is no easy task. I wonder why it isn’t easier. Shouldn’t we want to be content? Joyful? Blissful? Shouldn’t we want to be at peace? Shouldn’t that be our default? Like a survival instinct? Because struggle can surely feel like demise. Heartbreak can surely feel like death. Fire is painful; we pull our hand from the flame. Struggle is painful; we are paralyzed. We sink into the hurt.
When it comes to matters of our non-physical selves, we are not very well-equipped with the means to heal. Emotional pain is sticky; it lingers. It can stay with us for a lifetime. It runs deeper than flesh and bone. Much deeper than the city of neurons and synapses that live beneath our skin. Mending our heart is a skill, not an instinct. It takes work to stitch up the nameless, bodiless, whatever-you-call-it that lives in the center of the center of our spirit. We can’t touch it, put a band aid on it, suture it up. We have to tap into it. We have to tune in. We have to connect with something that is much bigger than we are. And we have to love ourselves enough to want to make the effort.
It is in our nature to want a quick fix, easy and painless. I wish I had one for you. I wish I had one for me. I don’t. Not really. All I have is this: At the heart of all struggle, there is a peaceful and enduring center. It is the calm at the heart of the storm and it is the steady quiet pulse that carries on - undying. The storm can only be survived from the center. And so we must look to the center when we are struggling, suffering, lost. We must connect with the steady quiet pulse in that nameless, bodiless, whatever-you-call-it that lives in the center of the center of the center.
The storm of our experience can be endured when we come face-to-face with it, lean into it, walk through it. We spread our battered wings, become unstuck and the bleeding starts to stop. It takes time. It takes effort. It’s work. But in time, with effort, it becomes our default, our instinct. Feeling good becomes a habit. I know it’s not a cakewalk; it’s not easy, quick or painless. But for now it’s all I’ve got... If you find a better way, you’ve got my number.
Finding zen is no easy task. I wonder why it isn’t easier. Shouldn’t we want to be content? Joyful? Blissful? Shouldn’t we want to be at peace? Shouldn’t that be our default? Like a survival instinct? Because struggle can surely feel like demise. Heartbreak can surely feel like death. Fire is painful; we pull our hand from the flame. Struggle is painful; we are paralyzed. We sink into the hurt.
When it comes to matters of our non-physical selves, we are not very well-equipped with the means to heal. Emotional pain is sticky; it lingers. It can stay with us for a lifetime. It runs deeper than flesh and bone. Much deeper than the city of neurons and synapses that live beneath our skin. Mending our heart is a skill, not an instinct. It takes work to stitch up the nameless, bodiless, whatever-you-call-it that lives in the center of the center of our spirit. We can’t touch it, put a band aid on it, suture it up. We have to tap into it. We have to tune in. We have to connect with something that is much bigger than we are. And we have to love ourselves enough to want to make the effort.
It is in our nature to want a quick fix, easy and painless. I wish I had one for you. I wish I had one for me. I don’t. Not really. All I have is this: At the heart of all struggle, there is a peaceful and enduring center. It is the calm at the heart of the storm and it is the steady quiet pulse that carries on - undying. The storm can only be survived from the center. And so we must look to the center when we are struggling, suffering, lost. We must connect with the steady quiet pulse in that nameless, bodiless, whatever-you-call-it that lives in the center of the center of the center.
The storm of our experience can be endured when we come face-to-face with it, lean into it, walk through it. We spread our battered wings, become unstuck and the bleeding starts to stop. It takes time. It takes effort. It’s work. But in time, with effort, it becomes our default, our instinct. Feeling good becomes a habit. I know it’s not a cakewalk; it’s not easy, quick or painless. But for now it’s all I’ve got... If you find a better way, you’ve got my number.
Thursday, April 15
Elephant in the Room
I want answers to all of life’s questions. Like right now. I want to know everything about everything about everything, and I want to digest it and I want to eat sleep and breathe it with every molecule of my being, with every beat of my blood, with every breath that I take til death do us part. I want to fill each moment with the truest, purist, most honest, unfeigned answers to quiet all of the questions that feverishly lash my brain. I want to unveil the mystery, the secrets, the “what-the-hell-is-it-all-about” that is a noun, a thing, the elephant in the room of all of the rooms in all of the places in all of the world.
I want to get to the bottom of it. I know I’m not supposed to. I know I’m supposed to sit cross-legged and breathe deeply and live in the moment and find peace in the experience, not the analysis of the experience. I get it. But I’m obsessed with the why and what and how. I’m addicted. I want to know, want to know, want to know. I want to know how I ended up here. I want to know why I was blessed with two of the most amazing human being as my parents. I want to know when it all will end. What it feels like when it’s over. I want to know how everything just seems to fall into place, and even when I’m digging deep into the dark, a part of me grows toward the light.
Because tell me there isn’t a reason. Tell me it is all happen-chance dumb luck. Tell me deciding out of thin air to move to Boulder, Colorado where I served my future husband a Grande 7-pump Chai Latte was a fluke. Tell me the psychic who told him he would meet a “petite blonde-haired blue-eyed” woman who would be his wife was full of it. Tell me those magical moments when we plummeted into love were anything but magic. Tell me Angelo met the head of Oncology one month prior to finding a lump because he was lucky. And that the head of Oncology got him in for tests and diagnosed the next day because of good fortune. And that his cancer turned out to be aggressive and rare and God knows where he would be today because he was “in the right place at the right time.”
I think there is no right place at the right time. The right place at the right time is every single moment we live and breathe. It is here now and yesterday and tomorrow and it is twenty years after we are gone. No one holds the answers to our questions. And twenty years after we are gone, no one will hold the answers to our questions. Our children and their children and their children’s children will be left with the same unanswered questions and the weight of the mystery.
And as for us? When we are gone? When it’s over? We become the mystery. We become the answers. We become the truest, purist, most honest, unfeigned answers to all of the questions. And we whisper life’s secrets into the ears of the elephant that carries us in the room of all of the rooms in all of the places in all of the world.
I want to get to the bottom of it. I know I’m not supposed to. I know I’m supposed to sit cross-legged and breathe deeply and live in the moment and find peace in the experience, not the analysis of the experience. I get it. But I’m obsessed with the why and what and how. I’m addicted. I want to know, want to know, want to know. I want to know how I ended up here. I want to know why I was blessed with two of the most amazing human being as my parents. I want to know when it all will end. What it feels like when it’s over. I want to know how everything just seems to fall into place, and even when I’m digging deep into the dark, a part of me grows toward the light.
Because tell me there isn’t a reason. Tell me it is all happen-chance dumb luck. Tell me deciding out of thin air to move to Boulder, Colorado where I served my future husband a Grande 7-pump Chai Latte was a fluke. Tell me the psychic who told him he would meet a “petite blonde-haired blue-eyed” woman who would be his wife was full of it. Tell me those magical moments when we plummeted into love were anything but magic. Tell me Angelo met the head of Oncology one month prior to finding a lump because he was lucky. And that the head of Oncology got him in for tests and diagnosed the next day because of good fortune. And that his cancer turned out to be aggressive and rare and God knows where he would be today because he was “in the right place at the right time.”
I think there is no right place at the right time. The right place at the right time is every single moment we live and breathe. It is here now and yesterday and tomorrow and it is twenty years after we are gone. No one holds the answers to our questions. And twenty years after we are gone, no one will hold the answers to our questions. Our children and their children and their children’s children will be left with the same unanswered questions and the weight of the mystery.
And as for us? When we are gone? When it’s over? We become the mystery. We become the answers. We become the truest, purist, most honest, unfeigned answers to all of the questions. And we whisper life’s secrets into the ears of the elephant that carries us in the room of all of the rooms in all of the places in all of the world.
Friday, March 19
More Than Enough
A beautiful day, warm, breezy. I sit with nothing to beef at except the slick sick feeling that time moves much too quickly. I don’t have enough, and what I do have is squandered. I have continually the sense that this time is invaluable and the opposite sense that I am paralyzed to use it, or am using it wastefully. I find myself wishing, wishing, wishing to have a corner of my own. I want to open mines of life, permeate the matter of this world. And how else to do it but plunge out of this safe scheduled time-clock wage-check world and into my own voids and the shimmering plasma that is life.
The minor hiccup of a problem is that I have not a very clue where to land. At least not in a solid, matter-of-fact, I-know-exactly-where-I -belong kind of a way. I tend to look outside myself, to be itched and kindled to some great work, something burgeoning, fat with the texture and substance of living. Where oh where do I belong? Life shines, beckons, and I feel caught, revolving on a wheel, locked in the steel-toothed jaws of my schedule.
I’m complaining, I know. I can’t help it. It’s the human condition. We are constantly giving birth to desire. We are always wanting more, always reaching, always looking, always lacking. But there is enough. There is enough time. There is enough space. There is a corner for me and my shimmering life mines. It’s all here for all of us. And until I find it, I will keep moving, keep working, keep making dreams to run toward. Because until I find it, I am satisfied. Truly. I am happy, anchored to life by deadlines, laundry and lilacs, the daily bread and a man, the most wonderful man, the dark-eyed stranger, who eats my food and my love and goes around the world all day to come back and find solace in my arms. And that - now - is more than enough.
The minor hiccup of a problem is that I have not a very clue where to land. At least not in a solid, matter-of-fact, I-know-exactly-where-I -belong kind of a way. I tend to look outside myself, to be itched and kindled to some great work, something burgeoning, fat with the texture and substance of living. Where oh where do I belong? Life shines, beckons, and I feel caught, revolving on a wheel, locked in the steel-toothed jaws of my schedule.
I’m complaining, I know. I can’t help it. It’s the human condition. We are constantly giving birth to desire. We are always wanting more, always reaching, always looking, always lacking. But there is enough. There is enough time. There is enough space. There is a corner for me and my shimmering life mines. It’s all here for all of us. And until I find it, I will keep moving, keep working, keep making dreams to run toward. Because until I find it, I am satisfied. Truly. I am happy, anchored to life by deadlines, laundry and lilacs, the daily bread and a man, the most wonderful man, the dark-eyed stranger, who eats my food and my love and goes around the world all day to come back and find solace in my arms. And that - now - is more than enough.
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