LANGUISHING WITH SHEBA

I don’t know what it is, but it seems like all my best laid plans have gone awry. My natural response has always been: I have to fix it! I have to fix it! I’m that mouse running on the wheel, getting dizzy, going nowhere. I’ve finally fell off. Not going to do the same any more. I’m not giving in or throwing up my hands in defeat. I just like to do something else. I want to get off the well beaten path. It’s hard to do. I know how tempting and comforting the old familiar is. But I’ll give it a good old try.

I’m sitting in my pjs and housecoat, basking in November’s weak tepid sunshine. It still brings my discouraged heart up a notch and a weak smile to my lips. I don’t have much to say but I like to feel the keys beneath my fingertips. It’s comforting to hear and feel the tap, tap, tap. I like to watch the black letters and words march across the page. It warms me from the inside out, much like watching Sheba languishing on her pillow last night. She has a face that makes my heart smile. I sit and let all these comforting feelings come into me. I rest in their comfort, remembering their essence.

There really is nothing that I must do. There is nothing to fix. Everything is as it should be. I have this time to linger and languish in my sunfilled room. Let nothing enter to cloud and clutter my mind. Let them all float by, the thoughts and the feelings, like clouds in the sky. I’ve been in sitting meditation with Mark Williams every morning now for months. Some of it is taking hold. Now I am able to sit in silence, with self guidance for 20 minutes. Some days are better than others. That is why it is call a practice. It is something I must do more of.

TWITCHING – Day 97 in a year of….

Day 97, October 29, 2016 @3:10 pm

img_8072I don’t mind telling you that I have trouble sitting still with it all.  I have trouble accepting things as they are.  I have this twitch in me that I should fix things, fix you, fix me and our relationships.  I feel that everything is my fault.  I know, of course, that I am not all that powerful.  But knowing and feeling are two different things.

I have this twitch that makes sitting with it all very difficult to do.  Sometimes I have to get up and make myself a cup of tea.  Other times like today, I get up and take Sheba to the park.  I went missing for a couple of hours. Eventually I have to return to the heart of who I am.  I cannot fix everything. Some things are not fixable.  Some things are better left broken – till they are ready to mend on their own.

img_8246My urge to fix is gone.  It’s okay to let things unfold without interference.  I don’t have to rush in.  I can just sit.  I’ve lived through that moment of needing to.  They will get easier with each sitting with nothing to do and no where to go.  Just sitting with my breath and my mindfulness teachers, Melli O’Brien and Jon Kabat-Zinn.