Word of the Week - 72

Words of the Week:  GRACE AND GRATITUDE

Today is Day 8 of a free, on-line meditation program from Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra, the theme of which is "Manifesting Grace Through Gratitude."  This is the second free course of theirs in which I've participated.  I can't explain why there was any gap between programs.  I will chalk it up to my tendency to wander off.

Here is the link that is sent to participants.  Even though the first days of the 21-day program are no longer available (though they may be found through the purchase of the course), there is still an enormous benefit to be gained from the remaining meditations.  You will need to register if you want to take part.  I hope that information is easy to find.  On Sunday I had difficulty connecting to the page, sent a FB message about my difficulty and received an almost immediate response with ideas for solutions.  Excellent customer service for any sort of program, especially one that is free.

These Seven Myths of Meditation may help to assure you, as they did me, that imperfection of practice is no obstacle to meditating.  In each of the sessions, led by Chopra with a mantra to repeat as a means of focusing, I have found an almost instant stilling of the chattering mind and a sense of what I assume to be the grace of which he and partner Oprah Winfrey speak.  That the road to this enlightened space is through gratitude makes it a good match for me.  I have so much for which to be thankful and my days include conscious expression of gratitude for all things, to the best of my ability.

In discussing the Seven Myths, Chopra speaks of working with a trained teacher to learn the practice of meditation, something which had me believing I was doing it wrong (!) as I had only the teachings of CDs and books before finding these courses.  I know people who have nearly life-long meditation practices which seem to ask more of them than I can give, being unable to sit in uncomfortable positions as my legs no longer bend that way, yet to find the quiet mind and optimism that I have here seems to tell me, as with so many things, we start where we are with what we have and do the best we can.  Chopra is an excellent guide and teacher.

Unless one has already developed a rare sense of peace and stillness, the world is too much with us most of the time.  In these roughly 20-minute sessions I become unknotted, calmed and restored, as in made more whole again.  There is nothing to sell here, only a gift to bestow.  In this practice or another which better suits your needs, meditation offers a respite from overload and my own tendency at times to become a bit wound up, to forget what I know and lapse into jabbering.  It is lovely not to be jabbering, either out loud or in my own head.  Surely that is grace.

Word of the Week - 37

Seaside village from Kirsty Elson Designs.

Michelle Holmes Embroidery.

Word(s) of the Week:  PLAYING FOR TIME

There is a sensibility with which I identify in the work of Kirsty Elson and Michelle Holmes.  Their wooden seaside encampments and understated embroidered vignettes express visually some of what I hope to capture in the ongoing story on my blog of Gloria. The Reading Man and life in Billington's Cove.  In the saga of 60-some episodes (so far), I arrived at a pivotal moment and its details have not yet become clear.

Because the characters and their place found me, not the other way around, I've learned to be trusting and patient.  They will spill the beans when they are ready.  They resist, which I've come to respect, any of my attempts to give them false moments, contrived musings, inauthentic action.  They and their setting do not belong to ordinary reality as to time and space.  I consider them not only imaginary friends but more.  They seem able to gauge the tides of my heart and inform me accordingly.  I have come to know myself better through them.  With their help I am clearer about what I believe, how the world, the universe even, works.

What happens after the dance, I mean THE DANCE, I have no idea.  It is not the ultimate moment in their story, yet it is much more than just a moment.  My great wish is that I not muddy any part of it by rushing them.

Once upon a time I meditated daily.  In the way of things, I somehow grew apart from that beneficial practice.  In the last few weeks, joining Oprah and Deepak Chopra, I've found what may be the way back to the states of mind that result from meditation.  My first thought was unattractively judgmental.  After the first session, I was grateful for the ease of the exercise.  It may be the lazy woman's path and I'm fine with that.  My rather elderly joints and muscles need comfort in order to focus.  I am either dreaming more or am more aware of my dreams.  I've had moments of being more connected to aspects of myself that I forgot existed.  I am able to slip into a state of detachment from daily stuff and let images appear, either during the meditation or other parts of the day.

In one of these "states," I saw a younger Reading Man standing in a field, talking in a soft animal voice to a horse for whom he obviously had great affection.  Their heads together, they seemed halves of the same whole.  Any stilling of the chattering, fretting mind allows the veil to thin.  I love going there.

I hope it won't be too much longer before my undeclared lovebirds and I resume our adventure.  I think of them as absent friends or a phantom limb, not as inventions of my imagination.  Until we meet again.  xo

Attributes of the moth

"Moths of Orange County, CA," photographed by Peter J. Bryant

A pair of comet moths, photo by Johan Nijenhuis

By now, which means after more than three years of blog writing,  some of my secrets have been pulled from under the couch cushions and put on the table.  Among these are the revelation that I find life to be teeming,  jumping with symbolism, that I willingly allow a representative portion of something to stand in for the still-to-come whole, that metaphor is my native language and very little is only what it seems.

In a short, perhaps five-minute segment of a recent podcast, there was a meditative exercise in which  listeners were directed to find a spirit guide.  The practitioner spoke of eagles, for the ability to fly would be required of the guide.  Mine arrived.  It was a moth.

It may be my most basic belief that we are here - wherever we are geographically, emotionally, physically in this moment - to be of assistance to each other.  Assistance, in this case, can mean anything.  Without rushing to Google, I thought of the moth, an extreme example of transformation, starting life as one form and becoming a different creature.  I am not who I used to be. Teachers, awareness and opportunities continue to find me, carrying me out of dimness, discouragement, into a brighter land.  Mulling and pondering - and daydreaming - are natural states, taking the measure of a situation, mostly by intuition, interpreting, perceiving, feeling.  Feeling my way toward knowledge, insight, information.

When I looked into what moth brings as a totem  I found: the ability to perceive with clarity, strong healing abilities, protection for traveling between darkness and the light, finding light in darkness, metamorphosis and, in common with the phoenix, rising from the ashes, in moth's case of the flames to which it is drawn.  What better sidekick?

The title above is one of those, "Quick, write this down," flashes that fill the scraps I mentioned in the previous post.  Attributes of the moth.  Forgive me, please, if I repeat myself.  Life as I have come to know it is fraught with meaning; likely it always was, but I had no skills.  These, too, are days of myth and fable, truths revealed in waking, walking dreams.  No wonder fiction explores parallel universes, wormholes, wrinkles in time.  How else to explain being conscious of treading the ordinary path of oil changes, bill paying, medical procedures, clothes that need washing or detecting an unpleasant odor in the refrigerator and, in the same moments, seeing the story within the story, the plan behind the random event, the bigger picture. 

For some of you, this will be like my talking in tongues.  That may be a fair comparison.  The best we can hope for is to know our own truths and to allow others to know theirs.  If we share common ground, there is much to discuss.  If not, I may be found in a somewhat unkempt state wearing soft clothes that feel like pajamas, pencil-callused fingers turning the pages in The Great Big Book of Moths.