Mindfulness

Clearing and Identity

Published on by elizaking

IMG_1505I spent part of my day yesterday clearing out my desk drawers of accumulated old paid bills and papers from the last couple years. In the beginning, I felt energized and full of resolve, sorting papers into category piles to help me decide what I need to recycle and what I need to keep. Pretty quickly into the sorting, however, I started feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, and indecisive about what should go where (by year, or by another criterion?) and whether to keep an old document ’just in case’.

This time, instead of attempting to push through the feelings and keep going, which is what I would normally do, I paused and just sat with myself. I stayed with the feelings that were coming up, not letting them completely sweep me away but being with them, like a friend patiently wanting to hear more.

Underlying the overwhelm was a feeling of fear that life is unsafe, and that I need to hang onto these pieces of paper that in the future may prove my identity to outside authorities like the IRS or BlueCross. I recognize that some of this fear is valid, we do need to hang onto certain documents to verify our identities in the world.

But I realized, as I got up and made myself a cup of tea for comfort, that this fear of a dissolving identity has deeper roots. I have been writing a scene in my memoir from when I was 11 years old and coming to terms with the reality of my family structure dissolving and reforming. My parents were in the process of separating. I spent my eleventh summer alone with my grandparents, watching the fragility of their increasing age, and their differences and difficulty in relating to each other.

The memory reminded me of the old panic of myself as a child, losing the safety and structure that my family had always provided. I am startled when panic still surfaces at moments like this, moments where I find I’ve tied my identity and sense of safety in the world to something variable and ephemeral, something I have assumed will last forever.

How strange that my feeling of vulnerability is so raw and intense, even after many years. I sat in my glider rocker for a while, rocking myself like a baby until I finished my tea and was ready to keep going with the papers. At the end, I didn’t feel euphoric, in fact I felt disoriented looking at the empty drawer before I put much less back inside. The empty feeling is uncomfortable and yet holds relief, a recognition that with each small gesture like this one, I have now made space for something new to emerge and surface in my life. I do like the budding sensation of momentum, and the sense of opening to possibility.

I would love to hear your stories of supporting yourself through vulnerable moments!

Cheers, Eliza

What Would Your Magic Potion Do?

Published on by elizaking

As I was walking home a couple weeks ago, a small voice hailed me.
“Want to buy a magic potion?” The speaker was a neighbor from up the street, a four-year old boy with dark straight hair, sitting with his Mom on the front steps of their house.
A box with three small bottles lay across his mother’s lap. She smiled at me and said, “He’s selling homemade magic potions.” She ruffled his hair, adding, “But you don’t really want to drink them of course!”
I nodded, and picked out a bottle and admired the vibrant purple liquid inside. “Tell me what this one does?” I asked the boy.

“That one digs a deep hole in the ground that fills up with purple water,” he explained carefully, then ducked his head and turned back toward his mother.
“Which is the one that makes you fly like a bird?” his Mom prompted.
“This one.” he scooped another bottle from the box with both hands and handed it to me. I put the purple one back and held up the second bottle. This bottle’s contents, a white translucent liquid with small white floating specks, didn’t grab me, much as I liked the idea of flying. I put it back.
“What about the last potion,” I asked, reaching for the third bottle, “What are its magic powers?” The liquid inside was a murky greenish brown.

“That one causes explosions.” the boy said, leaning forward, his eyes on the bottle, “I don’t know why but it makes everything it touches just explode.”
I hastily put that bottle back in the box. He picked it up and shook it gently as if to experiment with exploding something. I noticed a splintery stick of wood left over from a building project lying beside the bottles in the box.
“That’s for sale too,” he told me, “wood is very useful.”
“You need to let her know what they all cost,” his mother said as he picked up the stick of wood and started demonstrating its usefulness by banging it on the stairway’s metal railing. “Remember what I paid you for my potion?”
“A quarter.” he said, turning back to me as he fingered the wood, “You can buy the stick of wood for a quarter too. Soon I’ll have a whole dollar.”
“Are you saving up for something?” I said, searching my pockets for coins.
“Yes. Something special. But I don’t know what it is yet.” He added candidly.

I laughed and gave him two quarters. “Well, I will contribute fifty cents to your dream. I’ll buy one magic purple potion and the stick of wood.”
He took the quarters and began clinking them together in his hand. I gathered my prizes from the box.
“What do you say?” his Mom said, touching his shoulder to get his attention.
“Thank you.” he said automatically, his focus still on the quarters in his hand.

I walked home, considering why I had chosen the deep hole in the ground filled with purple water and not the potion that could make me fly. Partly because of the color, I decided, but I also liked the idea of a magic purple well, like a well of dreams or memories I could draw upon in my writing. I thought about the little boy and imagined how it might feel again to believe one could create a magic potion.

So my question for you is, if you could make a magic potion, what would your potion be like, and what would it do? Feel free to respond, I’m really curious!

Unexpected Benefits

Published on by elizaking
“What are the benefits of practicing meditation?” a newcomer asked at a recent Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center orientation to an evening of mindfulness and meditation. Later, I thought of an answering question to understand better where the speaker was coming from, “What are you wanting from the practice. What is it you are longing for?”

When I first started coming to Still Water meditation evenings in Silver Spring, MD, I was already meditating but was longing for a deeper sense of community support around my practice, an affirmation of belonging to a larger whole. I had no idea what that might look like. I definitely did not consider myself an early morning person, and had no interest in the morning meditation groups. But a friend talked me into trying one in Takoma Park. It was a stretch, but I started to go once a week. Things changed when I decided to go to a week-long retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery last summer led by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and author, Thich Nhat Hanh.

I started going regularly to three or four morning sits a week as a steady way to “get in shape” for the Blue Cliff retreat. People had told me that participants get up at 5am there every morning, and I didn’t want to be exhausted.
The morning groups i was attending in this area are not as early but at first, I always felt grumpy and sleepy getting up to practice. I learned how to welcome and be with a lot of internal resistance the whole time I was sitting! Over time the resistance began to dissipate so that even after I attended the retreat, I continued to sit regularly in the morning with a group or on my own.

Since then, I notice that while I still have ‘up’ and ‘down’ days, I enjoy watching the quality of the morning light shift as the seasons change. I feel quietly excited to be with my fellow practitioners and more open to their presence. Even when I practice alone now, I feel a deep sense of being connected with my community, not only people who meditate, but also, my larger community. I am recognizing that I have received much of what I was longing for originally, even though it has come in a different form than I imagined.

I invite you to share your insights about your personal benefits and discoveries from mindfulness practice or another practice/activity which has helped you feel part of your larger community. If you are new to your practice, what is it you are longing for as you begin this journey?  If you are a regular practitioner, what would you have liked someone to tell you when you were new? What’s changed in the quality of your life experience?

cheers,
Eliza