Meditation Energy

Over the years, my different therapists have worried when I go through these accident prone periods. They last for a few days, I smash dishes, step on rusty nails (my tetanus shots are always up to date), drive my car into light poles. That kind of thing. Depending on their therapeutic philosophy, it’s my subconscious telling me - something. Slow down. Concentrate. Pay attention. Be physical. Be here.

So damn, this has been a rough few days. I’ve had a horrible pain in my back (only at work, though. We can assume hunching over the laptop computer, or repressed stress. Or both.) After a truly impressive massage (thank you, Meryl), I’m driving home and on a dark country road almost have the worst accident of my life. I’m shaking the rest of the evening, all massage benefits gone. The accidents continue into the next day. I drop an expensive steak into the dog’s water bowl. My lunchtime drink spills all over the car. Leaving the office, I trip over the mat and sprawl painfully on the cobblestones.

Honestly, I don’t know what my subconscious wants from me. I’m not that stressed, been feeling mostly balanced. There’s some nagging financial things and a few projects that should be cleared up and I haven’t found that new job, but overall I’m content.

Bruised and paranoid, I peruse my astrological transits. Sun trine Mars retrograde? Chiron conjunction sun? Saturn square Saturn? All have their dark and light energy. What does my subconscious want from me?

Need to know. Will try meditating on it.

I read my new year’s day rumination in a creative writing group. One of our best writers did not like my metaphor of a person carrying “2000 years of spiritual baggage.” An individual, she said, cannot carry 2000 years of baggage.

The rest of the group cracked up. You obviously don’t have any fundamentalist family/friends, they laughed.

CS Lewis: There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

The father of my friend died yesterday afternoon. He never regained consciousness from a surgery before the holiday, and the brain damage was too great. They had to let him go. But it was too early and he was too young.

I ask you for prayers, energy, light - whatever you can send to his family, and to him on his journey. His name is Charles.

To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my ‘Soul,’ my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you. - Barbellion

He’s been hacking his little lungs out. He’s always done that, it’s endemic to the breed. But the last few weeks have been worse. We’re not sleeping. He has panic attacks every time he wakes.

I took him to the vet, who worried about the sound of his heart and lungs. But after a full cardiac workup, it was determined that his heart is fine, and his lungs are….well, the lungs of a 98-year-old guy. They started him on cough medicine, a bronchodilator, and antibiotics.

The bronchodilator has a caffeine-like effect. Jazz paced for 5 hours, I couldn’t even get him to sit down, he became frantic. We halved the dose after that night.

The drugs worked immediately, his coughing limited just to when he first gets up. He still shakes frantically though.

His holistic vet/acupuncturist visited last night. For the first time, he relaxed and enjoyed the acupuncture. She worked on his heart/lung energy. We’ve stopped the herbs, and the drugs, to re-think everything. If he starts to cough again, I can give him the bronchodilator.

The antibiotics undermined his appetite, and without food, he was throwing up.

My therapist put together a treatment bottle of Bach flower remedies for him: rescue, rock rose, aspen, mimulus, and schleranthus.

So he’s in detox. And we’ll see.

I mark the new year (after the champagne and dancing) with a tour through my journal. From the loose-leaf odysseys of my pre-teen and teenage years (journals which I burned during college), I’ve graduated to a more efficient system. A date book for the day-to-day (a line or two to summarize the day, great for tracking astrological transits over the years). Another journal for dreams. And another one for the more lengthy musings.

An example of the date book I use is from One Spirit book club [link].

At the end of the year, I turn to the blank pages in the back and summarize the good things, the accomplishments. So when I go back to prior years, I go straight to those pages. I can’t always remember what year I visited Machu Picchu, or when I danced to David Byrne live, or when I saw Momix perform Baseball, or when I attended the Van Praagh/Weiss seminar. Since 2000, my chronology is strictly quantum.

Then there’s the resolutions. I choose one (one ring to rule them all). One part of my life to concentrate on. Some years are very workable – the year I resolved not to attend any social events that I didn’t want to was extremely successful. Another year I resolved not to give any unasked-for advice – another resolution I was able to keep. I especially like the year I resolved to “pull up my big girl panties and deal with it.” This year I’m taking advantage of technology – I’ve set my cell phone alarm to chime every afternoon, a reminder of my resolution this year – which is too personal to discuss, even in this forum, even with my therapist. And it’s not what you think, it’s beyond that.

Last year’s resolution was a question – what are you doing here, now?

Even if you are not connected, even if you don’t believe – you know that something is happening. And everyone who is here, now, was born to assist. It’s a privilege to be corporeal at this time.

And now let us welcome the new year
Full of things that have never been.
-Rilke

Full moon, blue moon.

New year is the cleansing antidote to Christmas. After 2,000 years of spiritual baggage, decades (or generations) of family dynamics, and numbing social obligations, new year belongs to the individual. We move back into our own space, our own bodies, our adult perspective on the world. No wonder we feel like celebrating our freedom.

My date says while he appreciates the symbolic marking of time, nothing changes at midnight. “We’re going to wake up tomorrow with the same problems.” His focus is on the external forces, his disbelief in magical influences. He doesn’t want to be fooled by the champagne and noise and expensive food. Doesn’t even want to participate except as a social obligation.

But the new year is internal, it’s about renewed energy and belief in ourselves. It’s the feeling after confession, or a productive therapy session, or a week at a spa. The world isn’t different, we are.

I recently reconnected with a new year’s date from my college years. Back then we were too young to drink, too poor to pay for a dinner. So we showed up at 11 pm at the converted factory just to dance (sadly, it was the disco era, not much I can do about the soundtrack of this memory).

That night still rates as the best new year’s eve I ever had. Maybe because it was the first time I was out in the world as (almost) an adult. Maybe because he and I were in sync that night, there were no unanswered questions. And, at that stage of our lives, no real problems.

What surprised me is that, after all these years, he views that night the same way. After traveling the world, living in exotic locations, and many more relationships, he also remembers the night, what I wore, how it felt. And yes, there was an innocence then that can’t be recaptured, but I believe that it’s still possible to revive part of that feeling that there are better days ahead. And it’s not too late.

This is your night tonight, everything’s gonna be alright.

Happy Christmas.

Apologies for the absence - 2 weeks of visiting relatives, and then the first vacation in years.

First a report on Jazz. His kidney numbers were slightly improved. However, liver enzymes were elevated. The vet who did the exam (not his vet/acupuncturist) thought the enzymes might be the result of the home cooked diet (she’s not a fan).

Jazz had another treatment, which he settled into better than other times, and the acupuncturist has changed his herbs to address the liver problem - he’s now on Glenhia and Rehmannia (Yi Guan Jian). We’ll see how he’s doing in a month.

One of the visiting relatives is the owner of a very successful health food store, she was quite impressed by Jazz’s diet and bemused to see a dog enjoying broccoli and spinach.

A couple people have commented on the expense of treating Jazz through acupuncture, but I’m balancing quarterly acupuncture against the aggressive weekly treatment the vets recommending 1.5 years ago.

“Humans are the only animals who will follow unstable pack leaders.” - Cesar Millan

“There is a kind of heroism for which there are no medals because it is unmentionable. It is that of the subordinate stoically following a leader whom he knows is taking him to disaster.” - Huntford

What do you owe the person who is paying your salary? Your best work? The quantity of work that you feel they are paying for? The quality of work you feel that they deserve?

My first formal performance review in years was more abstract than concrete. Crying the economy, there was truly no chance of any raise. With money off the table, and no chance of any promotion in a horizontally-organized small business, the review was an exercise in negotiating expectations on both sides.

My review was quite good - overall better than I expected, because management freely admits that they are never satisfied. But the one thing they want me to do is to play to the owner, to manage his view of me. I’m ruminating on that today. If I’m doing the work but the owner doesn’t think so, is there a sound? If I play to him but don’t respect him, what does that mean? We’ve got a standoff here - both of us waiting to the other to prove their worth.

Since I have to leave anyway . . . . my coach says management is “abusive and narcissistic;” my guides say I was there to learn about how people abuse their power - and that I’ve learned the lesson and can get out of there at any time. (For a long time I worked for someone who was truly abusive, a screaming, bipolar genius whom I at least respected and learned from.)

Since I have to leave anyway, do I put the effort in so they’ll be more sorry to see me leave? Where do I put my energy?

The Last Place on Earth (Modern Library Exploration)

Wearing your aspirations. Secretly.

Bracelet, inscribed inside: “And she lived happily ever after…”

I’ve given this as a wedding gift for the bride (not that I’m into weddings, I truly hate them, always have. But fairy tales are fun.)

http://www.findgift.com/gift-ideas/pid-117309/