Fried.

I am fried. I'm not writing well. It's sucky.

I have a huge project that I'm trying to finish that was due on Monday, and it's been eating my brains. I have decided that today, I'm going to work on other projects and let the big, soul-sucking one lie for a bit. I hope this helps.

I'm not sleeping well. I'm not going to yoga. I'm not doing much besides sitting in front of my laptop in a questionable state of sanitation, writing.

One thing I have been doing in the midst of it all is keeping up my meditation practice, and it has served me well. Having a few minutes to be quiet and to notice my state has helped me to stay aware and to recognize that I'm doing a bad job at meeting my own most important needs. I have had a few experiences this week in meditation that have been powerful, and one last night has given me some insight into the way I'm working.

God gave me a gift with words, and I honor that gift when I use it well. It serves me; it is how I make my living. It is how I serve others. It is how I soothe myself when I'm struggling. However, when I exploit it like I'm doing right now, I don't honor that gift. I've got to learn to slow down and take my time to avoid exploiting this skill. I need to nurture it so that I can use it to nurture me.

Prayer and Meditation.

I have been focusing on meditation after having a really wonderful experience meditating a few weeks ago, but I have had less success with being able to pray. I have had a few different kinds of prayers over the last few years while struggling with my reactions to my husband's addiction. Most often, my prayers are centered around the themes, "Help me! Help me! Help me!" or "Please help my husband!" Sometimes, I have prayed in gratitude when I've broken through some barrier, and after working the steps the first time, my prayers have frequently reworded the 11th step..."God, please show me your will for me and give me the power to carry it out."

Last night, though, I recognized something new...

When I pray, it can function similarly to my meditation. When I sit to meditate, I am trying to quiet my mind, and the way I quiet it is to bring awareness to my thoughts. If I start to have a sexual thought about my husband, I can label it as "desire," and come back to my breath, my mantra, my center. If I have a thought about a resentment, I can label it as "aversion," and again return to quiet. Once I shine some awareness on my thoughts, they tend to dissipate, and I find some peace and stillness within myself.

If I apply these same principles to prayer, then, I can shine a light of awareness outside myself. I found myself praying last night, and the thoughts that came to my mind were all extensions of loving kindness to people who I love. I thought of my husband, and I brought my attention to hoping that he is able to follow God's path for him, and that the path will include some healing. I thought of certain members of my family and friends, and I bathed them with similar loving wishes. I thought of my students, and I wished them success in finishing the semester and hoped God would guide them to breakthroughs in their work. It felt so good that I even thought of some the people I like least in the world, and wished them peace and a softening of the rough edges of life.

I've heard many times that meditation is listening to God and prayer is talking to God, which was a helpful starting place...but this new understanding of meditation as an inward-facing concentration of loving kindness and prayer as an outward-facing concentration of that same energy helped me understand it all in a new way. I'm excited.

Gratitude.

Earlier this week, I got a mantra from my guru, and I've been meditating with it since. It's working for me. I'm not sure if it's my commitment to meditating twice a day and my persistence in sticking with it, or if it's the mantra itself, but I feel like I'm finding authentic peace.

This morning, I was walking between jobs, and the air was so, so cold, and the sun felt warm on my face, and the sky was beautiful and blue. I felt overcome with gratitude. I'm finding a better way to live, and it's working.

When I finished sitting in meditation last night, I couldn't get up. It felt too good to sit so surely in myself. I bowed my head in prayer, and sat for a long time repeating, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dear Husband,

Talking to you is hard. It's hard and it's wonderful. It's wonderful and it's terrible.

Honestly, I've had a better day today, though, for knowing that you're missing me. It's sick. A lot of people, mostly people who don't know you and who don't know me, are telling me I'm a fool for even entertaining the possibility of having a future with you. They're all absolutely right. I'm a fool. I've always been a fool for you, and I don't see it ending any time soon.

I like the idea of living apart and seeing each other sometimes, of taking some space to heal separately but with an understood intention of coming back together. I feel like I can catch my breath. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's a true thing.

I meditated with my new guru today, and somewhere along the way, I recognized that I was sitting quietly without thinking of you. It felt like a victory to be able to sit quietly and not think of you, but letting my mind go to celebrate that victory turned it back on, and sent it spiraling after you. Before I was able to get back to myself, I found my hands wandering through your hair, holding still at the place where your hair meets your neck. I found my eyes picking through its color, the dark singed with gold; my mouth pressing close, breathing deep. My mind finds its way to you always, but I'm working on it.

I love you. No more, no less. I love you like I've always loved you. I feel differently about you, but the love is just the same as it ever was. It's never grown. It's never shrunk. It sinks me in myself like an anchor. I guess that's marriage, really: a love that never changes.

It bears out to the edge of doom. We stand together on the edge. I know you'll leap, and I won't let go of your hand.

Your Wife.

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.

The Frame.

I was meditating in the bath tub tonight, and I had an odd thing pop into my mind. I kept picturing a beautiful frame. Inside the frame was blurry, glowing, yellow light, but I was focusing on the frame. It was porcelain and elaborate. There were roses, and I kept combing my eyes over every petal and every leaf and every line. It was exquisitely formed, perfectly colored, and looked exactly like things I like looking at...layered and intricate and feminine and delicate.

Somewhere, from deep inside, I heard, "You're focusing all your attention on the frame."

And it was true. I tried to pull my attention from the frame, and I couldn't. I don't know what was in the picture.

Get Him Out Of Here!

My yoga school hosts a guided meditation class that I've been attending. The leader is a poet, and he uses wonderful language to guide us on a kind of journey. Often, the imagery he uses involves white light, which is a potent image in my own personal mythology.

Tonight's meditation began with us picturing ourselves sitting on top of a beautiful, lush mountain. There is green, green grass that moves with our breathing, and there are roots that dig deep in the earth. We are breathing with those roots, and we are a part of them, and we are a part of the earth...and then the leader guided us through the earth back out to the water, and we felt the water running all over us until our skin felt like liquid. We kept breathing and being one with the liquid, and we became air, and then we were so much a part of the air that we were the entire atmosphere, which brought us up to the sun. When we touched the sun, we became fire, which is where we started talking about white light.

I love white light shit. It works for me. My limbs felt heavy, but filled with warmth and light. My mind was open. My breath was full. It was beautiful, until the meditation teacher said:

Over the horizon, far in the distance, you see a boy. He's coming closer to you, and you realize he's about 15 years old. He's very, very angry, and he's coming into your beautiful, peaceful space. He keeps walking, and he walks right up to you. He stops in front of you.

"NO!" shouted my inmost self. "Get him out of here!" The last thing I wanted in my beautiful world of peace, serenity, and white fucking light was an angry adolescent male. Fuck that guy. If I wanted to spend time with that guy, I could have gone home! And the teacher continued:

You know what you're going to do about him? You're going to give him what you've got. You're going to take the best of yourself--Your peace. Your beauty. Your talents. Your humor. Your health. Your serenity. Your happiness. You take all of it, and you give it to him. You rain it down on him. You take all that warm, white light that's in your heart, and you put it in the dark space where his own light should be.

"Fuck that!" says me. He's taken enough! I'm working hard to make some white light for myself, and I'm not giving him mine!

And don't fight it. You give it to him. You open up the dark place in his heart, and you put your light in there.

I scowled and resisted and cajoled against the teacher's voice, but he promised it would be ok. He promised. He promised that compassion for others was the way to finding more compassion for ourselves, that sharing our light can drown out the darkness.

And that's what got me...the part about pouring my light into the darkness. I spoke with Mantra on the phone a few weeks ago, and she kept telling me that the way to fix myself and fix my husband and fix my home was "to white light the shit out of the house." If I want my space to be filled with peace, it's my job to FILL IT WITH PEACE. So I opened up my white light supply, and I let it shine down on that pissed off 15 year old boy. I let it shine so bright that it dissolved him, and it dissolved me, and it dissolved the heap of dung that was suddenly there between us.

It was a powerful thing.

I stayed after to ask the teacher about the boy. I asked him why there was a boy tonight. He said he felt we needed to see the boy, that we all seemed to need to manifest compassion tonight. I kind of wanted to hug him, and I kind of wanted to slap him. I came home feeling a little lighter, and that's all I know for now.

Be Still.

"Be still, and know that I am god. I shall be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth."

-Psalms 46:10

I love it when I find these little tastes of the god of my understanding in the Bible. I need to make time to meditate. I hate it when I'm too lazy or busy to take proper care of myself. I hate it when I don't know if I'm too lazy or busy...you'd think those two wouldn't overlap so strangely.

I had trouble sleeping last night. I had trouble being still. My mind goes, and goes, and goes, and I seem to be lacking skills in turning it off...and no wonder I don't have skills in turning it off. I don't practice.

My goal for myself is to try to find 20 minutes twice a week, at least, to sit in stillness, to lose my focus, and to find that soft place inside myself that is most precious and true...to be still and know.