Guru.

"Oh, you are a writer! That is very good! You are creative! You have something beautiful that I don't have," said my new Guru.

"You have something beautiful that I don't have," I responded. "Maybe we can work something out."

At one of the places where I work, I'd noticed that one of the clients was a company that had "Yoga" in the title, so I checked out the website to see what it was about. I was intrigued to find a real, live guru, teaching mediation, Ayurveda, and yoga therapy in the city where I live. I'd looked at some of his workshops, and thought I might check one out one day.

A few months later, the boss mentioned that he'd practiced meditation with this guru for a while, so I was able to ask a few questions about the process. And finally, recently, one of my favorite yoga teachers put up one of this guru's business cards on our bulletin board at the school, endorsing his services. Those were two pretty good testimonials for me, even if it did seem a little silly for a guru to have a website and a business card.

This past week, I've felt like I've lost track of my center. For a long time, also, I've been interested in pushing the spirituality I've discovered through my 12 step work a little further, and I guess now is as good a time as any. I wrote to the guru yesterday, and I met him today. I'm going to meet with him once a week for the next little while to see if I can slow my mind down a little and to explore this stuff a little further. It can't hurt, right? And surely, it will be something interesting to write about.

Through.

The only way to get out of whatever it is I’m doing is to get through it. I don’t like it. I want a trap door.

My husband and I were both at home today together, which was alternately lovely and infuriating. I have such thin patience for any behavior that is even slightly addicty. It’s not just with him. It’s with anyone. I don’t have patience with my dog if she’s being willfully obstinate, needy, or petulant.

One of the things I’m noticing that’s different about me in my recovery is that lately, I am really aware of the things I run from. If I’m resisting something, I figure that there must be a reason why I am struggling around it, and it’s probably what I need. I figure that on the other side of my resistance is a door to a bigger, more beautiful life. For instance, there was that yoga pose I used to hate, ardha chadrasana. I hated the shakiness, the vulnerability…the exposure. But now, I have fallen in love with this pose. I’m stronger now, and my balance is better. I fall out of it sometimes, but most of the time, I stick it, and it feels great. It feels like I’m taking up as much space as I possibly can with my body, spreading myself out all over the world as big as I can ever be. I think of myself like a star, or like a sun, and I shine and shine.

But I used to hate it, and I'd run from it. I'm running, now, from my marriage, and I'm not sure if I need to keep persevering, keep sticking, and see what's on the other side...or if the healthy thing is to run and never look back.

"You Have a Thigh..."

"You have a thigh, but you are not your thigh," our yoga teacher explained. She was coaxing us deeper into our Warrior stances. My thigh was talking to me. It was telling me not to push further. I told it to be quiet...that it was going to get stronger if I kept pushing. I have a thigh, but I am not my thigh.

You can see the rest at The Second Road.

24 Hours in the Life of a Junky's Wife

8:40 PM: Get off work. Gather your things, and get in the car. Think, "I don't want to go home. I need to go to bed, but I don't want to go home." Call Nar-Anon friends, and find somewhere to go for dinner.

9:00 PM: Hold Nar-Anon friends hostage and make them watch you eat dinner and listen to you complain about how your husband won't stop smoking weed and playing video games with the 30 year old, unemployed neighbor, who seems to be taking up way too much space and time in your residence.

9:40 PM: Drive home. Cry quietly. Pray: "Please let him be asleep. Please don't make me have to talk to him."

9:50 PM: Call a girlfriend. Park in the road a few blocks from your house, and talk to her on the phone until you see the bedroom lights go off at home.

10:20 PM: Lights out. Go home, assuming you're safe from an encounter with your husband. Change from work clothes, pet the dogs, and get ready for bed.

11:00 PM: Climb in bed with him. Find a friend online to listen to you complain about how much you hate/love the handsome beast you married. Chat for a bit until he becomes too handsome to resist.

11:20 PM: Curl into his body and fall asleep in his arms.

3:30 AM: Wake up, weirdly resenting a lie he told 18 months ago. Roll out of his arms. Talk yourself sane.

4:15 AM: Wriggle back into his armpit. Back to sleep.

6:30 AM: He wakes up like a wildebeast, yelling at the dogs and sighing loudly. Ignore him. Force your eyes to stay closed and force your mind to shut up so you don't have to get up with him. Keep trying. When you can't fall asleep again, roll around in the bed, letting your resentments fester gorgeously. Tell him off in your mind. Tell him the way it's going to be from now on. Tell him, quietly, all about how he's going to get a job or get out, goddamn it!

7:40 AM: He comes in the bedroom and pounces on you. You're still telling him off internally, but you're pleased with the weight of his body on yours externally. You tell him you've been telling him off. He giggles and kisses your neck. Tell him how much you hate him, and wrap your arms around him. Bury your face in his chest and breathe deeply. Make love.

8:15 AM: Get up, get coffee, get dressed.

8:45 AM: Find weed paraphernalia hidden in the laundry room, and demand that it disappear. Swear you'll call the police if you find anything else illegal in your house, ever.

9:00 AM: Leave for work. Cry in the car, quietly. Listen to NPR. Try to settle down.

9:30 AM: Meeting with a client.

10:30 AM: Find yourself confessing your awful, complicated life story to another person.

11:30 AM: Back to work.

1:00 PM: Switch to another job. Work, work, work.

3:00 PM: Go home. Find the annoying neighbor in the house, playing video games. Find husband proudly painting a wall upstairs. Have a brief fight about how it's not the right wall. Tell him you wish he'd finish the projects he's already started before starting a new one. Feel sorry when he looks hurt and tells you he was trying to do something nice.

3:15 PM: Lock yourself in the bathroom for a mid-afternoon meltdown.

3:45 PM: Back to work. Work, work, work.

5:30 PM: Yoga. Breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe.

7:00 PM: Shower. Burn incense. Cry quietly. Get dressed.

8:00 PM: Nar-Anon. Breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe.

Talented Man Overwhelmed by Ernest Williamson III

People in Pain.

Someone got hurt in my yoga class today, and it brought up all kinds of interesting things for me.

A woman was doing bridge posture, and her arm popped out of the socket. She is one of those folks, apparently, who has that happen a lot to her, but it was scary because she was upside down, and she got really upset.

I'm going to tell the rest of the story at The Second Road...so go there if you'd like to read more.

Anxiety

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

-T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

My husband's crap is bothering me, and I'm mad at myself for it.

There have been a few weeks where I've been doing a really good job of staying out of his stuff. He's been struggling with this detox business, which is still pretty rocky after 4 weeks, and I've been going on with my life. I've gone to yoga, and I've gone to work, and I've come home. I've been kind to him, and I've helped when I could. I've stayed away when it felt too painful to help.

Last night, he said he wanted to go back to the methadone clinic. He said that this morning, he was going to go to the clinic to talk with his former counselor, and he asked to borrow my car to get up there. I told him he couldn't borrow the car.

I've let something in this interchange trigger me, and I'm not sure what it is. I kind of think it's less about him wanting to go back on methadone and more about him asking to use my car, which is a little bizarre to me. It's petty. I told him "No," and it's over. I'm mad, a little, that he'd ask.

I guess a part of it is that I'm sad that none of this will be over until I make it be over, and I'm sad that I am not ready to make it be over. I'm sad that everything is pointing in the direction of getting out of this relationship and going on with my life. I'm sad that this relationship has been an elaborate ritual of acting out the garbage of my mind. I'm sad that what felt like so much love was really so much sickness. I'm sad that I don't know if I'll ever be able to do better. I'm sad that the idea of being alone is so very attractive. I'm sad for the me who I thought I was, for the life that I thought was real.

I was climbing the stairs in the parking garage at work today, and it occurred to me that I'll be glad when all my pets pass away because then I can join a yoga ashram or a hare krishna commune. I had no idea I was waiting for my dogs and cats to die so I could join a cult, but apparently, I am. Who knew?

Photo by Apples I'm Home

Obsession Posture.

It was the end of yoga class today, and it was time for us all to lie still and pretend to be corpses. Savasana--the word itself sounds like a sigh of relief. At my school, the teachers bring around a cold, lavender-scented cloth to wipe your sweat and lay over your eyes, and it's your job to relax and enjoy the new openness you've just brought into your body through your practice.

I stretched my body out, got my cool cloth, and closed my eyes. I breathed one last, deep breath in, blew the air back out of my mouth, and was ready to slip into a few moments of silent stillness.

Immediately, I began obsessing in a way that I can't quite understand. It was a past resentment, something I thought I'd let go of, that came rushing right up to my mental foreground.

You see, my husband got paid $68 for some work he did a few weeks ago, and he took the money to a pawn shop and bought a video game system with it. He didn't give it to me to pay the electric bill. He didn't buy food for the dogs. He didn't buy groceries. He didn't buy methadone for himself. He bought a fucking Nintendo GameCube. It made me furious for days, and we fought about it, and he justified it six ways from Sunday, and I called everyone who ever attended a Nar-Anon meeting in my town and told them all about it, and I cried and freaked out and finally, finally, finally, I prayed about it, and I thought I'd turned it over.

Apparently, I didn't turn it over. Apparently, I'd stored it in my hips, and pigeon posture followed by frog worked it right back up again.

I spent my five minutes of quiet raging. I don't know why I'd waste my time. It doesn't hurt him. It only hurts me. It doesn't change a thing.

My husband is foolish with money. Because he didn't spend the money on heroin, he feels like he's had some kind of a victory. Probably, it is a victory. When I am struggling to keep a job together and pay the mortgage every month, however, it doesn't seem like a victory to me. It seems like another failure in a long list, another let-down, and more evidence that he's not ready to be a grown up...more evidence that he's a luxury I can't afford.

Today, that's where I am. He's not a satisfactory partner, and I'm not ready or willing to leave him. The more I acknowledge to myself the reality of this situation, the better off I think I'll be.

He's in Day 8 of his detox now, and it's not been so awful. He's sick a lot, and he's miserable a lot, but this time is better than all the other detoxes I've seen him through. I don't know if it's because this is something that he's chosen instead of being backed into a corner like he usually is or if the detox from methadone is just a less excruciating but more prolonged experience...but it's not so bad for him, which means it's not so bad for me. If I can just keep my own mind from wondering off into places it has no business, I could be rather content with my life...

Headaches.

One of my jobs is causing me some grief. I am excited to have something to obsess about that isn't my husband. Isn't that insane?

I find, however, that even when I'm obsessing about something that isn't my husband, I'm still inadvertently obsessing about my husband. I'm an expert at obsessing about him. The problem at my work involves a few issues that allow me to obsess about my husband vicariously. For instance, people expect me to think for them instead of finding information for themselves. I'm in situations where I'm expected to be more responsible than is my fair share. These situations remind me of home.

There are also moments when some of the folks I'm around at this job are irrational and angry. Irrational and angry is quite familiar to me. Irrational and angry people make me feel kind of like I have razor burn on the inside...like I have razor burn on the inside, and someone is drenching it with alcohol. My insides are rather irritated. If you could see my insides, the parts where I keep my emotions, it would be really red and festery.

I'm not doing a good job of using my tools presently. It's been a while since my step group met, and I'm not able to get to as many meetings as I used to make. I can't go to yoga as much as I like to go. I'm not sleeping enough. I'm not praying enough. I'm tired and hungry and angry all the time. I can feel all the effects of these slips, but there's not a damn thing I can do about it until one of these jobs lets up.

Angels.

I swear, sometimes in yoga class when it's that part where we say OM, I can hear angels. They usually start singing in the middle of the second Om.

Is that weird?

Ups, Downs.

I got home late tonight, but we had such a nice night together...mostly. We have such fun together when things are good. Underneath it all, though, no matter what, there's always this tension...this darkness stirring underneath the surface. I wonder if it goes away. From what I've heard from folks who remain in relationships with people who are well into recovery, it disperses, but it never goes away. I wonder if I want to live with that cloud always.

It has its advantages, really. Life is sweet, or life is sad...but it's never passive or happening to me without making me think and feel. Sometimes I think I'd like to stop having so many feelings, or such big feelings...but that's not true. I like feeling life, feeling alive. I like knowing that things are happening, that precipices are ahead to be surmounted or plunged off. It's exhausting and exhilarating, this life.

I found out today that Krishna Das is going to be having a chanting and singing concert in my town pretty soon. I'm so excited I might die. It's probably silly, but his music came to me at a time when I was trying to figure out what god was for me, and it helped me understand. The first time I heard "God Is Real," it made me cry on my yoga mat and be a big mess of sweaty, stinky tears. I think I'm going to take that evening off from work and go, all by myself, and chant with him and cry in front of him and see if it brings me closer to something.

Headstand.

I've wanted badly to be able to do a headstand. When it's time in yoga class for our inversion, the instructors often tell us to choose our inversion from many, but they walk us through the shoulder stand.

And don't get me wrong. Sarvagasana is a great pose. I like feeling all the blood pooling in my head, feeling my body calming down and cooling off after the long, sweaty class. I like flopping my legs over the top of my head into plow and feeling the tops of my feet pressing against the floor. Shoulder stand is fabulous in its own way.

But I want to stand on my head. One of my teachers said one time that sirasana is the king of all yoga poses. I have looked around the room, jealously, at the students ignoring the teachers walking through sarvagasana and slowly unfolding themselves into a beautiful, tall, strong, head stand.

As a little girl, I could stand on my head. I took gymnastics classes, and we learned to do the tripod headstand there. I loved it, and I loved folding into and out of it, kind of climbing up my own arms until I found my world upside down, felt my spine stretching long in places where it's normally short and compacting in places it's normally long. I wanted to feel that freedom, that upside-down, disconcerting freedom again as an adult.

I started trying to climb into the pose a few weeks ago, and I could never get my legs up off my arms. I'd try to reach even one toe a little higher up, and it felt as if my legs weighed a thousand pounds each. They wouldn't budge.

But I kept trying, and guess what? Tonight, my feet lifted, and I felt my stomach tighten, and my legs came off my arms! I didn't get my legs all the way straight, but I felt it coming. I took three full breaths with my legs slowly rising and rising before I trembled and fell to the floor.

I am so excited! Soon, I think, I'll be able to do it beautifully!

It occurred to me that asking my husband to leave but not being able to follow through is something like my first, tentative, awkward movements towards sirasana. I felt something opening up within me, and some part of me that was weak is stronger now. I'm getting closer to something, something elegant, strong, and wonderful.

God Stuff

I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embacing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart--
oh, let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God, spend them however you want.

-Rilke

I was listening to Tara Brach lecturing about Radical Acceptance this morning, and she quoted this bit from Rilke.

Rilke is one of those poets I sometimes turn into a fiend over...my entire being will be gripped by my profound need for a Rilke poem. Now I have a new one to add to my Rilke supply.

And once again, how funny to find these words when I'm in the midst of my own adventure with finding and defining my own Higher Power! I'm reading the Bhagavad Gita, practicing yoga like a god-thirsty madwoman, praying and looking and seeking the loving kindness and acceptance of something bigger than myself, something with answers better than the answers I've come to on my own.

My answers are bad answers, and I need help finding the right ones. I like it that everywhere I go, I find little sign posts indicating I'm on the right path.

I Don't Want To.

The pose pictured here, ardha chadrasana, or "half-moon pose," is the worst yoga pose ever in the history of yoga. It makes vomit and bile and rage rise up in my throat, and it makes my ankle shake and I hold my breath and I start thinking that doing yoga isn't that great and maybe I'll never come back to another class ever again, and I think that my teacher doesn't know anything and I hate the Yoga Sutra, every yogi who ever lived, and the entire country of India, in fact the entire Eastern hemisphere for developing a tradition that would make my ankles shake and my stomach boil and my breath totally disappear in such a wretched, horrible, impossible way.

I was explaining to a yoga teacher about how very much I hate this posture and trying to find out if I might be allergic to it and be able to sit out on it forever forward, and she pointed out that the poses we hate most to do are generally the ones we need most.

Sigh.

So now I keep finding myself reaching for the (fucking) floor and trying to open my (fucking) heart to the (fucking) ceiling while shaking on my (fucking) standing ankle and trying to lift my (fucking) other leg higher and higher. Because this (fucking) pose is unloosing something in me that I'm holding on to, or strengthening some part of me that is weak, or opening some choke hold that is keeping me from growing.

Similarly, I find myself on the verge of beginning Step 8. I've been looking at Step 8 out of the side of my face from the first time I came to Nar-Anon.

Fuck Step 8, yo.

I think I'm allergic. I don't have anybody to make amends with. I'm perfect and I've never wronged anyone! I'll just sit out while my step group does Step 8. I'll watch from the sidelines, towel myself off, and drink water. Maybe I could go back and work on step 4 some more? I'll be powerless! I'll list character defects! I'll do push-ups! Hell, I'll stand in my shaky ardha chadrasana, but please don't make me have to make amends with folks!

It's awful, too, because after Step 8 is done, then there's Step 9! I'm pretty sure that everyone I might have injured (which is no one, obviously, if you read the paragraph above) would fall into the category of "except when to do so would injure them or others," so again, when my group moves on to Step 9, I'll just stand on the side and towel myself off and drink water. I've got some appointments that day or something.

Krishna Das Is My New Boyfriend.

And I don't care what you have to say about it.



See and hear more here.

Don't Fuck With My Yoga.

Fucking with my yoga is a really bad idea.

For real. Ask my husband.

Free Yoga...

Hey yoga people. Since we had this little outburst of yoga love last week, I thought I'd share something I just did. I just figured out that you can download all these millions of yoga class podcasts on iTunes for free. That's cool. Now I'm all sweaty and yoga yummy.