I Am My Practice

Finally met CK's mother and step-father -- feeling hugely relieved that the anxiety of that first meeting is over and pleased to have had the chance to spend time with them. I felt a little more comfortable after spending the whole day to them. It also helped to have reassurance from CK that I was doing great, especially at those times when I felt like I was babbling.

It also wakes up a little of that awareness of just how much I do not fit in with, feel connected to, my own family. That awareness was still with me this morning when I read news from my Mom that she'd had an infection from her eye surgery and on Halloween slipped, falling on her back. I was aware of feeling both worried about her and weary of the constancy of her ill health.

On Sunday CK and I discussed sanzen, if it were to be offered while we were at Sunday service at Great Vow Zen Monastery. She had made an ango commitment to go to sanzen with HB at least once. I noted that at the monastery she would literally sit behind me in line and would be able to watch all the things to do that way.

So I found myself sitting before HB in the more formal sanzen room at GVZM. He blinked in surprise at me and I mentioned CK's visiting family. I talked to him about the shakiness right now, how my practice was leaving me aware of the ways in which I've not been fully honest with myself. At the same time I have feeling as though more and more of who I thought I was just falls away.

He asked who I am. At first I responded that I don't know. That is part of the anxiety I'm feeling right now, the shifting of who I thought I was. After a moment I looked up and said, "I am my practice." and he nodded at me.

Today was kind of tough, some painful truth. On top of a busy weekend with not enough sleep I find myself very tired tonight. All day while working on some Perl code my mind has pulled away reactions and moved closer to what hurt was not being addressed. As tough as it was I feel like I am working towards the truth again.

A little autumn haiku

What my mind came up with when I was trying to settle it into the silence of zazen at Great Vow Zen Monastery on Sunday, November 9, 2008.

Geese flying overhead.
Wild messengers calling out,
"Winter comes, prepare!"

Calm in Voice Despite Anxiety in Spirit

Last night was the first time HB told me I did a good job chanting for service after zazen. No reminder that I'm doing fine, to slow down. It wasn't the usual service I've been chanting either and HB had commented several times to me several times I needed to be stately in my chanting for the ango opening ceremony. He sent me to practice while people sat zazen!

I really never sat last night. During kinhin I let LM know I needed to chat with her to discuss the ringing of the bells. While I was going over that with her HB told us we had just a couple of minutes before he wanted to give a talk about ango at the end of zazen. As soon as I settled onto a seiza bench HB was talking. I tried to let his voice fade into the background so I could settle into my body, let my breath move around the knot of anxiety in my chest over chanting.

Afterwards HB gave me a thumbs up, a smile, and said, "Perfect".

I am just trying to stay with everything I'm feeling right now. There are these great moments -- the election, HB telling me I'd done a good job, Barry telling me twice how much he like my article, reading for SMART this morning -- all of these bright, positive things and the deep uncertainty I'm feeling right now.

Tonight in asana practice I was mindful of JW telling us as we started the teacher training program how for everyone that's done it stuff has come up. Every time she teaches things come up for her -- I can't imagine doing that! In the intensity of working, studying, teaching, taking asana practices, and going to teacher training classes I feel like I've pulled out thin again. Thin and taut enough that more falls away, things I kept saying I was comfortable with.

There is a part of me that is tired of this work, this endless unpacking of the great trunk of junk that makes up my coping mechanisms and PTSD. Disliking that learning how to help others, to teach better, to deepen my understanding of the Dhamra always seems to feel as though parts of me are pulled apart. I know that being sick the work is another form of resistence, although I think it is understandable that I will feel weary from the effort from time to time.

President Obama!

Truly a momentous evening.

I started to check returns at 3:30 (pacific) this afternoon, in earnest at 4:01. At 5:20 I was at home and had to stop checking to go teach my yoga class. At that time Obama had 77 electoral votes.

When I got home at 7:30PM, after teaching a class where I felt a little bit distracted, Obama had 207 electoral votes.

Sat watching returns steaming from CNN, checking NYTimes, CNN, and local news websites. AM and I just sat watching, forgetting to make dinner for a while. Getting up at one point to put a bottle of champagne in the freeze to get cold, fast.

When Obama gave his speech AM, DW and I opened the champagne out on the front porch. Around the neighborhood we could hear fireworks, champagne, and honking horns! Later I would read reports that over 150 people were in Pioneer Courthouse Square celebrating returns and the same number had taken over SE 39th and Hawthorne, banging pots and pans! The city is in celebration mode and is likely to remain so for days.

The champagne turned out to be a terrible. Wretched really. It required the addition of some frozen mango to get even near drinkable. I believe now that the bottle arrived in a floral arrangement that was a housewarming gift from my Mother.

The senate race is too close to call and I am too tired to keep checking results. I'll check first thing in the morning and see where we are at. It may take a day to really sort through all of the ballots.

I'm very saddened to see Proposition 8 passing in California. Not to mention other ballot measures passing to limit marriage and, in the case of Arkansas, adoption because of sexual orientation. Obama's win gives me hope that an administration that promotes tolerance, not to mention the Supreme Court appointments, will really change things in this country.

My Picture in a Zine

My article came out today in the Sangha newsletter, Ink on the Cat. It seemed a little strange to me to see myself there, printed, in black & white, looking out from something I could hold in my hands. I'm not sure if I've ever had my photograph next to something I wrote. When I think about it, the only time my photograph has been printed is in things like year books. Once or twice in small, local papers when I was a kid participating in a school or civic event.

In high school and college I had things I wrote show up in the school papers or literary zines. Mostly poetry, I wrote so much poetry throughout my teens and twenties. I moved onto just having a website and putting up my own poetry there when I was in my twenties. The poetry seemed to just stop showing up, years ago. It feels strange sometimes to not have poetry swimming around my head all the time. Once in a while something occurs to me, just in a flash and mostly whole. Haiku shows up in those flashes.

At times it feels like the PTSD burned through that language. When the anxiety caused by it is at a peak it feels like I am entirely cut off from any ability to think coherently, much less communicate. Being able to get any words out is a physical fight. In finally naming what left me feeling like I was broken and trying to work on it, the words no longer arrive in the spare beauty of poetry.

And yet on all sides I am being encouraged to write. My Zen teachers and community, my Hatha yoga teacher, my loved-ones, and co-workers. Tell the story of my weight loss, my realizations about myself as I study yoga, coming to a place of peace. All of is why I write a blog, trying to come up with some practice that would help me figure out how to tell whatever story decides to come up.

I feel a little at a loss as to where to start. Really all of those stories are the whole story. The free-fall of personality I experienced, was because of my weight loss. That loss of my carefully constructed personae that I defined as me left behind the stark reality of my PTSD. Peeling back the layers of the trauma leads me inexorably back to my childhood. The way out of all of these things has been the yoga and Zen practice.

I feel a sick fear at my Mother finding out what I've written and still managing to punish, humiliate, or at the very least make me feel guilty for embarrassing the family. There's a voice that says that I should wait until she is dead to write about her. I guess I feel like I don't know how to write this story because I'm still living it and most of the time lately I feel like I have no voice of accomplishment to speak from.

Yet here is my picture, printed in the newsletter next to my words. Someone from the Sangha has already emailed a compliment to me on my words, adding their voice to both CK and AM's.

Craving Sweets

I'm craving sweet things tonight. Chocolate, cookies.... Even the ads for sweet, non-vegan, overly processed things on the television look good! I had some more yams and broccoli with some slightly sweet, Thai-style peanut sauce (thin kind), which addressed the craving a little. I'm guessing I'm still feeling the major sugar-fest of Halloween and Diwali. So many yummy treats from Sweet Pea, so much sugar!

I am more aware now of the cravings, more mindful about them. Before I just indulged them when ever they came up. Really I know the cravings were more emotional based, just wanting satisfying things to eat because I was unsatisfied with my life. It isn't that I don't feel that kind of craving from time to time, I just am more aware of it, much more able to say to myself what my body needs as opposed to what my mind is clamoring for.

One thing that has changed about it is the ability to notice how the body does crave sugar, above and beyond the mind wanting to be satisfied with something sweet. Whenever there's a few days in a row where I have sweets I find myself feeling my body craving them.

Considering Each Choice

I'm feeling really tired out tonight. It has been a couple of big emotional talks, both with AM and CK, sandwiched around a very full day of yoga teacher training and my teaching Sunday. Also ended up getting my new mobile phone sorted out (about 90 minutes inside of Lloyd Center... ick). I feel pretty drained now, but not awful.

With AM and I it was really one too many "little things" the past week. Stuff just not being taken care of, feeling like my requests are set aside again and again. It all just came to a point where, in response to his enthusiastic input to an idea I'm working on for a yoga website, I found myself telling him that I felt as though he had many other priorities to attend to rather than get distracted by my project ideas. After we had talked a little more I finally said that more than anything my trust in our relationship had eroded over the past few years, to the point I was feeling rather hopeless.

Today I finally admitted to CK just how shaky I've been feeling about my relationship with AM. I also shared how I'd talked with AM on Friday, letting him know how tenuous I felt. How tight things are financially, which felt terrifying to share. How scared and upset, on top of all the icky shame stuff, I've been feeling.

I had been trying to tell her small bits, but afraid to share the whole with her. By the time the weekend rolled around I really had started to feel like both relationships were crumbling away. She talked more with me too and it was helpful to really learn from her what she was feeling rather than always trying to make it out via the underlying tension. We both agreed that although these truths are difficult, that we still need to reveal them together.

AM and I spoke further back at the house later. I commented that I still felt like he was my best friend, but that I also just felt like all my tricks for coping with being unhappy with how things have been are used up. He commented back that he felt like he had, worst of all, disrespected a friend in how he's treated me. He wants to show me that he can actually be the person he says he is.

I was trying to keep in the back of my mind something HB said this past week during a dharma talk. That our only way is to do the skillful, ethical thing in each situation as it arises. We cannot predict what we'll do next year, we can only approach each choice that is presented to us as it comes and in that moment make the choice that best embodies the precepts.

In this exact moment it feels right to continue talking to AM and giving him some time. He has noted that he knows he has to start showing me he really is intent on changing, doing what I need to feel more supported. I feel like it honors the relationship we have shared, the regard & love we have for one another. To honestly acknowledge what I need and provide space to see if those needs can be met. That's this moment.

I honestly don't know if there will be a change. I'd like there to be one. I'd like to believe my best friend can be who he says he is, especially in being a real partner to me. It would make my whole path more clear if changes did occur and it entirely fits with my real deep feeling for the precept that guides us to see the good in others. But I honestly cannot predict that changes will happen or not.

I feel profoundly grateful that CK reminds me of her love for me, that she doesn't plan to leave me. It kicks up the shameful feelings, the need to hear her say it leaves me feeling weak. This is scary, big stuff and sometimes I feel cut off from her by it. I can feel my body, my tense breath, but I cannot sense her sometimes.