Someone Like Me

“Guess what? I have flaws. What are they? Oh I donno, I sing in the shower? Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I'll hit somebody with my car. So sue me-- no, don't sue me. That is opposite the point I'm trying to make.” Michael Scott, “The Office”

In our sangha, we speak of ‘conditioning backlash’ whereby your ‘reward’ for a sought after experience that frees you from an unwanted freedom or behavior is nothing other than an apparent redoubling of effort to seize your sensibilities. That’s what happened following my ability to wait out an overwhelming craving in my last writing.

It wasn’t until several days and binges later, yesterday, in fact that I could ‘catch’ my mind wanting to wander down the alley of what I can only describe as an internal debate over whether to eat something more at the conclusion of dinner and how dreadful I’d feel to just ‘stop’ for ‘the whole evening’. Though it was like averting eyes from a roadside accident I could feel an internal pulling away and some intuitive assurance that I’d be better off if I did. Sure enough, I went on about my evening and had the most peaceful ‘food day’ among other things, I have had in a month—since I decided it would be OK to have a piece of my brother’s graduation cake to be exact.

That experience is my internalization of what is referred to as mastery, although I have no idea if I’ll be able to repeat it at will. That is the point we reach when we really ‘know’ the internal conversations are just that—voices in the head borne from a conditioned past extending who knows how far back—and though powerful and convincing and causing us to identify strongly with its/their pleas—are not us, but simply housed by us. When we really know that to be true, is when we all of a sudden have available to us the choice to turn away and behave differently.

Of course there are no end of spiritual traditions that espouse that reality. In the 12-step program, that experience can be thought of as surrendering to power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity as stated in Step 2. Grace is a lovely way to hear it described as well. Most recently I have heard it described as being blown from the belly of the whale, JUST at the point at which we give up all hope (another way, maybe of describing surrender). In any case, I came, I saw, I let go and eating, along with the rest of life, is more peaceful today.

“You must know that you can swim through every change of

“Won't you help me sing my song

From the dark end of the street

To the bright side of the road” Van Morrison

Mild Mannered Reporting

"I can't stand to fly. I'm not that naive. I'm just out to find the better part of me." Five for Fighting 

Cheri posted a practice reminder recently suggesting we imagine what we'd ask Superman to do for us, if we could. For some reason this tickled a place of childish delight inside me, and has excited all my pleasure centers, to the point that I (almost) don't remember the second part of her practice reminder which was to see how much of that which we were asking of Superman we might be able do for ourselves. Luckily, my heart rushed in with the answer before my head could intervene and talk myself into world peace. "Plenty of money," was what I would ask for. Now I don't know how the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or x-ray vision yields the ability to provide this, but that is the joy of awakening a child within, now isn't it? 

I suppose the plenty of money would cut out a lot of conversation in my head, ostensibly anyway, regarding what I can and cannot do with my time at this stage of my life where I find myself at a crossroads by dint of being out of work, yet too young to retire. So what *would* I do once I had this plenty of $$$? I'm almost too excited to contemplate, the thought seems so joyous. Off my stepdaughter would go to the college of her dreams, and so too my daughter to medical school following college. John could stay at his hourly job not one minute past when his heart tells him it's time to leave, and not knowing whether we would or not, we could stop the chatter surrounding the endless futile speculation about when we'll go back to a decent income level.

Assuming I had the time, (maybe Superman can do several things for us and longevity could certainly be added to the list), I could spend it on further learning in a new field, and ever so casually resume looking for work in my current field. 

The 2nd part to the question was to ask which of those things we could do for ourselves. This was also interesting and in some ways even more fun to think about. Remembering one of my first 'hooks' into practicing sitting meditation and studying with Cheri was hearing her underscore that all anyone *ever* wants is a certain feeling-- I think that I'd like to be able to provide the means for what I project is a fulfilling feeling that our girls would receive by making their educations just happen. In many respects this was a feeling I enjoyed by virtue of my own parents' generosity.

The other items fall into the category of a sense of urgency-- John needing to believe he can let go of his job when he needs to, me believing I can't stay out of traditional work and those things are so subjective, unless I am in the throes of believing the tug of war in my head. "What about benefits? What about money?" on and on. And of course there is validity to those concerns, but what gets lost sight of on a regular basis by me and I suspect others- is that those things need not become fuel for self-battering as they can be made to become by abusing 'voices' inside. 

As the Superman game suggests, facts can be laid in their place alongside a healthy sense of wonder and imagination with a result that might be something far greater in the real world than ever imagined. Right now I am just loving going about my day with a schedule all my own and knowing it's always going to include time to craft and lunch at home with food I had plenty of time to prepare. Maybe 'the next thing' will include income enough to make sure I always have that time and that personal space as well as the ability to pay the bills.

I have not been served wrong by taking the opportunity to wonder aloud or to myself 'just for fun,' that's for sure.

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm."

Emily Dickinson
Copyright 2010 Celia M. Feret All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be used without permission from the author who can be reached at celia.feret@gmail.com.

Zen Train

"We say, "Love your brother." We don't say it really, but... " Davd St. Hubbins in 'This is Spinal Tap'

Cheri is fond of commitments- making them actually. You'd think that might not be the case, because so much of what everyone thinks of as Zen involves living in the 'now'. But in the now, when we commit to something 'then,' we get to observe the changes we experience if any between this 'now' and that 'now'. Was that as confusing to read as it was to think up? 

For example, I made a commitment to lighter eating every day, several days ago. Today, I hardly remember the commitment at all, let alone why it seemed so important. Consequently, I ate a lot starting last night when John and I decided to do fondue for dinner, a favorite indulgence of ours, and the only time John *ever* eats the least bit unhealthily.

All I know is, this was the longest weekend ever and at the same time it flew by. There was so much to do, yet it involved suprisingly few 'action items,' as I used to love to say in the corporate world. In the service of getting things done, in addition to my sanity, I made a decision to forgo a workshop centered around annual goal setting, and I think therein lies the answer to why all this overeating, in part.

I've never been fantastic at knowing or setting (these are different) healthy limits-- I guess that's obvious in a blog devoted to overeating. Well, add two ex-spouses and children from those unions to your current marriage, and all bets are off as to what constitutes appropriate rules of engagement. In short, John requested I participate in something that would benefit one of his children, and the only day to get it done in a sane manner was the day devoted to the workshop. Giving up the workshop wasn't so bad in and of itself but the project I agreed to undertake was excruciating-- not so much physically although it was no fun to look up volumes of personal data for financial aid forms, but because it was like a trip through the memory lane of hell that was often our early family life.

But the heartburn here is that I saw this freight train coming a mile away. We call that the good news in Zen because here to fore the freight train of wanting something other than 'what is' would come, take us aboard, spit us out somewhere along the track and be bounding on to the next station before we knew what was happening leaving a wake of destruction in its path.

Other than being able to 'see' opinions and emotions bubble up to the surface, sometimes before, sometimes after I spouted them out to my husband of endless patience, otherwise known in these stepchild situations as Mr. Rock and a Hard Place, I see no value at the moment in my new found powers of observation at this moment.

 "Whatever you are, be a good one," Abraham Lincoln

Annie Get Your Gun

"Now Ive been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun." Cat Stevens

There are the days when we sing about the peace train and there are the days when we oversleep the alarm, can't find our ticket,  and forgot why we ever thought it was a good idea to board anyway. That would be me today. Poorly slept, behind in what I need to do and what I planned to do even though at least on paper I have ample time to do it all (Note to retired friends: I now totally get how it is one can NOT have a day job yet scarcely find time to return a phone call!).

I became interested in what my meditation (Western Zen) teacher, Cheri Huber calls an awareness practice, organized around, well... meditation... readily and dramatically after attending a day long workshop at the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment. Starting to meditate so quickly (like the next day) surprised no one more than me quite honestly. Celia's Top Ten Least Likely Activities would include meditation right *after* sleeping outside in a tent and aforementioned guest stints on Survivor.

However, Cheri 'got' me when she began explaining that nothing in the universe was dedicated to my suffering. Now my husband John over and over respectfully disagrees with this idea, and is happy to supply a list of people he KNOWS want him to suffer but I, lacking in that masculine, affable, sales guy confidence have to admit that my suffering could not possibly hold anyone's interest that long. By process of elimination, like the day at age 5 when I vehemently denied magic markering my parents' painted white windowsill and my mother, acting on a hunch, asked me to turn over my hands which revealed black magic marker (I still to this day wonder how she KNEW to ask me that!)-- that meant I was doing something somewhere along the line to muck things up for myself just enough to have perpetual angst and never feel like I was participating in the right life or living the "right" way.

As in the Big Box Zen store where the guide shows us around the voices and parts of our emotional selves that go around masquerading as ourselves, I came to believe that sitting meditation would take me toward the path to becoming the internal observer of the store that alternates between being overseen by a kindly, older grandfatherly like presence with infinite patience and understanding, and a psychotic control freak with an emotional age of 5 at the very most standing at the helm with machine gun ready to fire.

We talk about watching ourselves *become* someone else. With much study we define these aspects of our personalities and sometimes give them names. They are spoken of as subpersonalities. Over time (and I wouldn't ask how much at this stage as it certainly doesn't sell the process), we come to understand that however powerful those familiar scenarios are when we have become a part of ourselves, we are not *that* person but the presence that watches, contains, and ultimately can love that person. Sometimes, often in fact, that person is 'those 2 people,' in the form of a younger child being given information by an older child. That's where, in part, the voices section of the Big Box store does well and when we sit we get in the habit of noticing what is being said in between couting breaths.

So today, very fair to say that identification with a tired, overwhelmed and much in need of grown up attention subpersonality had her way with myself and my family (gee, wonder if my name is on John's list of suffragettes). Often, the only remedy is to hope we realize when we check out and patiently wait Father Knows Best style for this little person to feel reassured by the bigger presence that we actually can offer at these times. Other times, we wake up to an emotional battlefield the day after smelling of virtual gun powder and littered with used up artillery. The trick is to see that all that is nothing more than remnants of us doing what we are conditioned to do, and fearlessly start over.

Today that amounted to taking that person running my mouth away for a while and going to a favorite karmic refuge, the movie theater. I have been engaging in meditation, retreats, email classes, and reflective listening offered by the Zen Monastery Peace Center for just about 6 years now and it's been a lamp of solace and joy that has restored both of those things even when Machine Gun Milly is taking the lead.

“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.”

Mary Anne Radmacher