It’s been a good week. For the most part. I feel like I haven’t been able to say that for far too long, but I am able to say it about this week. I was on call all last Sunday, but didn’t get called in once… Ahhhh! Monday was a typical monday, but after months of making excuses, I finally made it to my group meditation. It felt so good to be back in that room with people I know and the amazing energy of a group meditation. I also forgot how much I missed the Sangha talks that Mike, who leads the group, gives after. This weeks talk was on discipline. I thought it was a very interesting topic as I am very familiar with that word but also have a strange relationship with it. (You can listen to these dharma talks at heartoflight.podbean.com)
He spoke of an experiment that has been done several times where they put a rat in a cage and give the rat 2 levers. One lever is for food and the other lever is for pleasure. The results have been the same several times, the rat starves to death. This is a profound finding and one that I think speaks very much to our current culture of instant gratification. If we can’t have things right away, then it’s almost like we don’t want them at all. I am guilty of this as well. So having, or choosing to have discipline in order to not neglect our basic needs is very important. He also spoke of discipline versus control and how they are not the same. “A self-disciplined person is not an anal retentive person” Control is about the ego, discipline is about an attention to what is and acknolweding and inquiring what is. I found this very interesting and it really made me think. I believe I go back and forth between discipline and control. I also feel I have done a lot of work to be more disciplined and give up control. Some times more than others obviously, and control is what I regress to almost as a triggered response. I am observing my reactions more and more to learn from them and then tweak them accordingly. Needless to say, it felt great to be back as well as thinking about things that I know are important. I get so much from Mike’s talks and just being silent with strangers for 40 minutes, I am making these meditations a priority again.
Tuesday and Wednesday were really busy days at work. I haven’t had steadily busy days back to back since I was in critical care. It felt good, but also reminded me why I left critical care in the first place. It’s unlikely I’ll have days back to back like this again anytime soon, but I was able to get through them just fine. It was just wierd to have a work “hangover” again as I haven’t had one in so long. It was also kind of fun to dust off my old critical care skills and prove to myself I’ve still got it.
I was off work on Thursday. I rearranged my living room and I am really happy with how it turned out. It is much more open and spacious than it’d been. I’d been feeling the itch to look for other places and that I want to move when my lease is up in June/July so it was nice to sort of freshen the place up in the meantime. I went to yoga and then came home and did some laundry and just got more organized. I was pretty tired later and took it easy the rest of the day. There were some things going on with my dad so I was able to make some phone calls and get some answers which was nice. Thursday night, however, my sister was concerned that something was going on with my dad. He just seemed off. She sent me some videos of him and I agreed with her concerns. It is so scary to see your dad in ways that are just something you couldn’t have imagined would be your reality. It breaks my heart that he is the way he is right now and there isn’t much else we can do to change it. He is in a skilled nursing facility and getting the rehab he needs, but we still have a long road ahead of us and thursday we had a bump in that road. Friday he had some tests that didn’t give us many answers, but also didn’t find anything new so for now things are ok. It’s been such a rollercoaster of emotions and bumps in the road since his stroke. I continue to go back to One day at a time every single day.
After work on friday I went into the city (San Francisco) as I had tickets to a show. Music is my solace lately. I could not survive my life right now without music. Every genre out there has made me happy or helped me when I was having any kind of feeling or emotion. I bought a record player and a few records that I have been playing a lot lately. Simon & Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan. It’s been so great to light incense or diffuse oils and just sit and listen to the beautiful music come out of the record player. I feel like I’m listening to music differently now too. It’s funny, at my guitar lesson thursday, my teacher Myles, had me lose my place in a song and have to jump back in on the 1. I was able to do it every time without fail. He said “maybe you have a musician trapped inside you” and I feel like I do. I’ve always felt that way. I’m not saying I’m going to be a rock star, but I do love and appreciate music so much and I feel I’ve been studying it and listening to it in so many different ways lately. It’s been so fun. I find picking up my guitar to be routine now, it’s not as much of a struggle. I’m still nowhere near playing for anyone, but I have come a long way and will continue to learn as much as I can as well as enjoy music made by all the amazing artists out there.
Today, Saturday, I went to yoga. I had a wonderful class with a new teacher, Ana. My usual teacher tore her ACL and MCL so is most likely out until May or June at least. I had not taken one of Ana’s classes before so wasn’t sure what to expect, but knew I needed to be on the mat. It was such a great and well balanced class. The music was gentle and upbeat when necessary, she threw in some ab work in a way I hadn’t experienced in yoga classes before, and she did some great adjustments throughout the class. I felt so good afterwards. I also made it to my al-anon meeting. Todays meeting was on Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I haven’t formerly worked the 12 steps. I go to my saturday meetings which is a step meeting and we go over a step a week. I go to meetings more for the things people share than for the steps we study, but I end up getting so much out of both. A lot of what people shared today was of being vulnerable in order to share the nature of our wrongs with others. I kept thinking about how since reading Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly, which is about shame and vulnerability, that it’s been my goal to be vulnerable. Something I used to run away from… progress. That is mainly why I decided to start this blog. I wanted to share what I’m thinking and feeling when I am thinking and feeling things. I want anyone that cares enough to read this to know that they’re not alone and maybe we’re thinking and feeling some of the same things. Even though why we may be thinking and feeling those things may be for very different circumstances and reasons. Being vulnerable and putting myself out there has helped me open up and start to heal so many things. My al-anon meetings I am my most vulnerable as I share some of my most intimate feelings there, to strangers essentially, although they are becoming friends. At my yoga retreat I did the same thing and that turned out to be one of the best weeks of my life. This blog was kind of an experiment to just have a place to put my thoughts and feelings, but also knowing that people will read them just makes it all that much more real.
So thank you for taking to time to read my thoughts and feelings, for holding the space for me to be vulnerable. I hope what I have to say will help in some way as so much of what other people say to me when they feel safe enough to be vulnerable has helped me.
Mindfully Authentic 