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Timeless Moments

December 30, 2013 //
0

How do I ‘measure’ time in those timeless moments of meditation?

Just one moment...

Just one moment…

I woke early this morning, feeling rested and serene. It is an ordinary enough morning. I sat down to meditate…it was 5:35 am. In the ‘next instant’ it is now somehow 6:50 am. More than an hour slipped by as I contentedly planted myself and my awareness fully in just one moment… now.

Some other moment.

Some other moment.

I don’t know that meditation ‘does anything’ for me beyond the obvious bits of change I really feel: the increase in apparent emotional resilience, the improvement in my sleep over weeks and months, improved posture, an increased everyday level of contentment, increased patience and compassion with myself and others…but… that’s not exactly ‘science’, is it? It is simply my experience with the value of meditation in my own life.

Another moment, another day.

Another moment, another day.

When I started this blog, I was struggling. A lot. I struggle less now, and enjoy the moment more. Even the challenging moments seem less fraught with a sense of futility, doom, and torment, and a bit more like ‘moments’, themselves. Learning to meditate, and doing so in the face of a personal conviction that “I already know this and it doesn’t help me”, has been critical to my personal growth, and healing, this year. I’m not ‘selling something’, and there is no ‘helpful link’ to a product anywhere in this post.

Yet another moment.

Yet another moment.

I am a student of life, of love, of mindfulness. I am asking questions, a lot of questions, and gently observing my experience more, and thinking ‘about’ it less. I am learning to live firmly in my ‘now’ and slowly, little by little, I am healing my ancient hurts.

75 minutes of meditation slips by as comfortably as 10 minutes these days. Unmeasured time, uncounted minutes. Worth it? Totally. I am learning that time spent in meditation, spent observing and aware of ‘now’, of living mindfully, is just about the best way to spend it. Certainly, taking time for timeless moments in meditation is a lovely way to begin a Monday. Any day, really, but definitely a Monday. 🙂

The photos? Just a handful that didn’t ‘have their moment’ in earlier posts, on other days. Pictures of evening light and quiet moments in 2013. This has been a very important year for me. I don’t cry much these days… I do meditate.  It is possible I spend as much time meditating these days as I once spent crying.  I haven’t the data to quantify that accurately, so I can’t say with certainty; I feel changed.

A very recent moment just at dawn. A beginning.

A very recent moment just at dawn. A beginning.

In the morning, life can feel so new, so ‘right now’, and so gentle. In some moments, these days, my whole life feels that way: new, gentle, and ‘right now’.

Today is a good day to experience change, to wonder, to be awed by loveliness, to embrace what matters most, to smile on the inside, to love. Today I am compassionate, joyful, and kind. Today I am tender, and gentle. Today I will change the world. 😀

 

 

 

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Turning 50, winter, women, Words

Road Signs and Highlight Reels

December 29, 2013 //
0

I woke early this morning, filled with a sense of purpose, and slightly concerned I might have ‘overslept’. It was 6:00 am. I didn’t feel rushed, but I also didn’t want to, so I remained committed to the purposeful moment, and moved through my morning routine contentedly. It was the start of an excellent Monday… only… today is Sunday.

I’m still contented; early mornings don’t distress me. I slept well after a couple difficult nights, and a day of illness, and feeling both well-rested and ‘well’, it is a lovely morning thus far.

I took time to meditate, and my yoga practice felt relaxed and deep, and I was patient with myself. I enjoyed the satisfaction of doing a couple new asanas with fluidity and grace, having practiced them enough now to be able to do them without refreshing my memory immediately before doing them.  One of my partners had been pointing out how much bad posture was also causing elevated stress (through physical discomfort) and I added a couple of asanas to my yoga sequence specifically to help improve my posture, overall. It’s been helping. I also got my eyes checked – because by far the most common scenario for my bad posture is ‘hunched over the computer/my laptop’.  I did indeed need new glasses.  Just knowing my eyesight is a factor in my posture, and thus my pain and stress levels, I adjusted my settings on my laptop so that everything is a tad bigger and easier to read. 5 years ago, having to take such an action would have peeved me for days, and caused me to feel very blue over ‘aging’. This year, it was really a pretty matter-of-fact thing, without stress. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of the user preference settings in my own computer to suit my current needs? Anything else would be…ridiculous. I’m eager to have my new glasses, too.

Somewhen during this morning’s meditation, thoughts of road signs [on life’s journey] and highlight reels [of life’s important moments] drifted through my consciousness. I observed them, as words and ideas, and let them drift on by. They lingered in the background, wanting to be considered later, and here I am considering them.

It would be pretty convenient if life did have ‘road signs’, wouldn’t it? “Abrupt Change Ahead” for life’s unexpected challenges, perhaps, or “Caution: Slow Self ” for those groggy mornings? We try so hard to benefit from the wisdom of others, and with such limited success, sometimes. Is that a lack of trust? Is it a lack of understanding that the experiences of others may be truly relevant to our own? Is it a misplaced sense of our uniqueness to the detriment of our similarities? Is it a lack of will competing with the possibility that even those acts or qualities that do not serve us well, may serve us somehow? I find myself wondering if I can somehow imagine those ‘missing road signs’ as I experience my now – by inserting a gentle “Yield” sign in those moments of stress before escalation, or a bold “Stop” sign in that breath before saying just the wrong thing? If I could, would I mind them or disregard them? That got me wondering… am I a ‘good citizen’ in my own experience? I suspect that last one could easily amount to an entire day’s thinking…

Highlight Reels are something totally different, but still somehow potentially instructive and cautionary. I often explore a montage of relevant memories when I tackle life’s curriculum. New lessons often prove to be significantly less ‘new’ than I experience them to be initially, and there is value in considering prior opportunities to have applied the lesson facing me, as well as considering what future opportunities there may be.  There is also value in contemplating past successes – with precisely what I am learning, and things that are quite different in some way.

When do those ‘road signs’ become paralyzing anxiety? When do ‘highlight reels’ become self-deprecatory or punishing rumination full of futility and despair?  If the most useful question is not ‘when?’… what is it?

Not even a thousand words, and no pictures, and I notice the morning wearing on gently. It’s 8:00 am, and although it is a Sunday, I hear a partner making coffee in the kitchen. This morning’s words are more words in a recreational way than words with any urgently serious intention. Casual words. Reflective words. Neither road signs nor highlights – just words.  I will set them aside, and return to the immediate and beautiful ‘now’. 🙂

Today I am compassionate. Today I am content. Today I am changing the world. Sundays are good days for change.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, winter, women, Words

This Is Entirely Different

December 21, 2013 //
4

Well, or maybe it isn’t.

Actually, it is.  I’ve written ‘this post’ six times, now. Each very different, written on a different theme, a different emotional voice, a different perspective, expressing very different needs, or understandings of the world around me, or my own life. It’s an odd morning that way. I’ve been up since 6 am, and after some meditation and a bit of yoga, I have been sipping my coffee and writing.  This post is entirely different from the previous versions.  It’s a strange morning and while I feel moved to communicate…I’m not sure what I want, or need, to say.

There’s a meme trapped in my thoughts. It drifts around Facebook regularly, it comes from somewhere…unknown to me in the moment. Words over a picture, the usual thing…the 3 questions meme – quote? “Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said by me?  Does this need to be said by me, now?”  I do love some good questions. I woke with these words in my head, but juxtaposed over a troubling dream that seemed very unrelated to the words.

I dreamt I was dangling from the Burnside Bridge, holding on by my hands, everything slick from a drenching rain that was falling. I pleaded with a man on the bridge to pull me up – I felt fear and desperation, and a panicked certainty that falling would be the end.

The Burnside Bridge

The Burnside Bridge

The man in my dream was a lover, or husband, or  father…someone dear to me, someone I could count on, someone I expected to assist and support me.  My pleading went nowhere helpful.  My potential rescuer seemed unaware of the urgency of my situation, looking vaguely thoughtful and caught up in his own thoughts, his own moment.  I repeated my plea, my hands were wet with both rain and sweat, and it was so hard to hold on.  The man above me looked down on me and politely said he would be happy to help, of course, but first he wanted to give me some feedback…

I woke to that ‘feeling of falling’ that dreams sometimes end with, feeling quite terrified, heart pounding, short of breath to the point of panting – and very very happy to be quite alive and not actually falling to my death in the icy December waters of the Willamette River.

I meditated. I let the dream go. I wrote. It came back. I wrote different words and dispelled my demons. They returned moments later. I wrote more different words, changed my thoughts (alright, Brain, nothing to see here, move along…), and continued to write, erase, rewrite – again the dream returned. I decided, finally, fuck it. Write about the weird dream and see where it goes. It doesn’t go anywhere, really, why would it? It was a dream. One of those intense, not-quite-a-nightmare sort of dreams that I generally accept as my sleeping mind attempting to communicate something to my waking mind – it is an endeavor of limited successfulness, and largely due to the difficulties with words.  This particular attempt seems to be pointing me toward considering emotions, words, and what matters most in the present moment. Differences between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’, perhaps, or a reminder that we each have our own needs in the moment, in life, in love… or… perhaps something entirely different.

Now it is morning, the household begins to wake. The day is all potential from this vantage point, and dreams are behind me, lost in the night. Today is a good day to love gently. Today is a good day to be compassionate with myself, and with others. Today is a good day to experience joy, and contentment, and to accept struggle with compassion. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, winter, women, Words

335 Days

December 9, 2013 //
7

It’s been 335 days since I began this blog, this journey, this cycle of change and growth. 335 days.  A bit less than 47 weeks. 8040 hours, give or take. More than 482,000 minutes. Time measured, time spent, some of it wasted, all of it precious, and limited; I am living a more deliberate, mindful life than I had been living. I continue to practice new skills, continue to refine new practices that I value, and that seem to enhance my every day experience. There are a lot of small changes in the way I experience my life, the qualities I bring to my relationships, the value I place on the experiences of others, their challenges, the lessons they offer me when our paths cross along the way.

Now there is time to consider it all as the end of the year approaches.

It has long been my practice to take time on New Year’s day to consider the year past, and the year unfolding ahead of me. An hour or two, at least, to really put some attention on whether I achieved my goals, where I’m headed, what I can improve, what my challenges are. Funny, I’ve been doing that since I was about 14… it wasn’t as helpful a practice as it could have been, because for so many years I let my thinking self control the agenda, the tone, and the outcome, and left no room for my observing self to bring stillness, calm, and insight. Light without illumination, in a manner of speaking. This year I have come so far, and much of the journey on a very different path than any before. I’m eager to sit down with myself this New Year’s Day, look 2014 in the eye and say “Let’s do this thing!”

I slept badly last night. I didn’t, however, experience the stress of ‘how will I get enough rest to…’, which often complicates the bad sleep picture by throwing additional anxiety and something rather like ‘performance pressure’ into the mix. It was a pleasant relief to realize that just getting up and doing something other than ‘trying to sleep’ would be inconsequential to the day that followed.  I feel groggy and fatigued, predictably enough, but the morning is pleasant and comfortable in spite of that.  I’m an analyst by trade, which had tended to foster a rather simplistic notion that somehow ‘data fixes everything’ – if only there is enough of it. It hasn’t proven to be the case in practice. I spent years gathering sleep related data on my own experience: hours of sleep, hours disturbed, the nature of sleep disturbances, when they occurred by type, where my hormones were, my diet, exercise, medication, even details about the weather or environmental conditions, all sorts of stuff. I carefully analyzed the data for trends, looked for patterns, even found some; none of it mattered, because none of it had the power to affect the outcome in my experience. I struggled with missing pieces, undeveloped skills, correlations I wasn’t aware of, didn’t recognize, or didn’t understand were relevant. In my experience of my own life, mindfulness beats analysis for enacting change and improving my experience, easily. It’s not even close.  2013 has been the year that mindfulness became something, for me, and I, in turn, am becoming someone I enjoy being – sleepless nights and all. 😀

This morning seems a nice one to take a moment for gratitude, and a smile. The path isn’t always easy, and sometimes I still feel like I’m walking in the dark, banging knees, shins, and heart on unseen obstacles, but I no longer fight the needful journey.

Where this really started, back in 2010, and a moment of gratitude for the love of the man who shared it with me, then, and remains with me, still.

Where this really started, back in 2010, and a moment of gratitude for the love of the man who shared it with me, then, and remains with me, still.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, winter, women, Words

Reason, Purpose, Value

November 18, 2013 //
1

My day started wonderfully well yesterday. Calm, strong, confidant, I enjoyed the walk to the office. Along the way, I passed the spot where someone else, on their own journey, regularly stacks a number of rocks. They are often tumbled down by someone else, on a very different trajectory in life, and that was the case yesterday morning. It touched me and being moved I stood motionless in consideration.

I really find value and a moment of stillness and calm in that stack of rocks, so carefully balanced. I didn’t question that feeling, simply stood and experienced the moment. Then…

I stacked the rocks.

I stacked the rocks.

A humble offering, a moment of gratitude for the serenity that short pillar of balanced stones has offered me so many mornings. As I walked away, I wondered how long it would remain.

On the other side of an extraordinarily unpleasant stressful day at work, during which I had many opportunities to deploy new tools, practice new skills, and discover depths of strength and character I did not know I had within myself, I walked home. I felt aggravated. I felt disrespected. I felt unappreciated.  My walk was aggressive, fast paced, and my heels struck the ground on every step, rather than seeming to move softly over the surface of my experience. I felt angry to the point of wanting very much to define myself as anger.

Then I got to the pillar of stones I had stacked in the morning, still standing there so still and strong. Hot angry tears held back with such discipline during the day spilled out and coursed down my cheeks. I stood, still. I felt my feelings and really gave them the room they need, instead of trying to steady myself and gently hush my spirit. I’d done what I had to, it was finally time for me. I stood and I wept and I felt the strength of my breath, and the simple power of acknowledging choice and will.

I walked on feeling calmed. I got home and my loving family was there to greet me and the evening was gentle and nurturing. Other challenges were set aside for the moment, and we built instead of destroying. No railing against the unfairness of it all, no hours of dissecting the who and the why of every painful moment. I was content to be home, to be safe, to be valued.  As I drifted off to sleep – which surprisingly enough came with relative ease – I heard the voice of a favorite cartoon character in my head “I learned something today…”

Today, I am strong. I am compassionate. I am open to change. Reason? Purpose? Value? I have them in good quantity, and they are my own to make use of as I will.  Today, I will change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women
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