So after seeing my sister-in-law's blog during Thanksgiving I started thinking: "Geez, I could soooo do something like that!" I have so much I could write about. Sometimes a person just needs to get out what they are thinking. So here goes my first blog.
I have been a miserable girl the last bit. I have felt so empty and lost in many ways. My husband Carl and I have been going to therapy one or two times a week to clear up some long standing issues we have been having. And finally I say ENOUGH! Enough is enough! I am so damn tired of putting up with myself. I have only been halfway living. I am tired of living a sub par life and letting that be my reference for normalcy. Just because everyone around me is living sub par does not mean that I have to. I have put this off long enough and now I am finally ready to dive into a life changing experience. I am going on eleven years now of being sans religion, or belief in general. I was so hurt after christianity crashed and burned for me that I couldn't move on. I wasn't ready to, but now I am.
And what aspects of myself do I hate with so much venom? Glad you asked. I am easily stressed. I need far too much time to recouperate after emotional trials. I have a viscious tongue. I am an awful housekeeper (really, the worst!). I am very self centered at times. When stressed I push everyone I love most away from me. I think over and over again about issues past that I can not change. Basicly, I am thoroughly flawed. Utterly and completely imperfect.
Last week I started thinking about how I have allowed myself to get where I am. Slowly, over time, one hurt after another, I have smothered myself into a cave that I peek out of and squint at the sun and quickly go back into for safety. It came to me all at once the other night as I was watching the new Julia Roberts movie with my husband for our date night. It sounds cliche! "Eat Pray Love" was flawed, but the core was juicy and ripe with encouragement. DON'T just exist! Which is what I have been doing for a very long time unknowingly. I left that movie feeling inspired and I have started reading a book my husband had tucked away that I have always wanted to but couldn't muster the inspiration to pick it up...god I hate that. It is called "When Things Fall Apart" by Pema Chodron. Oh...yes! Only on the first chapter and my mouth is watering.
"When things fall apart and we're on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that's really swell. In fact, that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable. Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly."
"What we're taking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye-not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking. The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled. There's not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have much more to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die continually.
Instructions on mindfulness or emptiness or working with energy all point to the same thing: being right on the spot nails us. It nails us right to the point of time and space that we are in. When we stop there and don't act out, don't repress, don't blame it on anyone else, and also don't blame it on ourselves, then we meet with an open-ended question that has no conceptual answer. We also encounter our heart. As one student so eloquently put it, "Buddha nature, cleverly disgised as fear, kicks our ass into being receptive.""
Honestly I could just type the whole first couple chapters into this it's all so good! For me this isn't about whether or not there is a god. It isn't about any of those difficult questions that I feel are truly unanswerable at this point. This is about inspiration. Life altering change that has no "believe this or you burn" or really anything at all attached to it. This is for me. This is about loving myself. This is about actually LIVING again. And in so doing lovng all those arround me.
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