Sit. Stay. Heal

Aleathia says:

It is strange to wake up one day when you think your life is starting to go in the “right” direction only to find that you have rut a circle in the carpet moving in all the same directions. The last seven months I have imagined to myself that I was working on getting stronger and doing better things in my life.  I was exercising, doing yoga, meditating, drawing, writing, doing self help things, eating better, and keeping busy.  What happens when I stop? The world comes crashing in like a tsunami.

In the last few days I have had to admit to myself that I live in a constant state of distraction. This distraction lends itself to not being able to sit with myself and in all this pain I have been carrying around for years. I have some unnatural desire to be my own superhero. I want to save myself from myself, but that is not how it works. That road, for good or bad, is full of self-absorption and ego.

Three days ago I started reading Pema Chodron’s “Taking the Leap” which is a book that helps one to recognize the strength of old habits and fears and what they can do to you. More importantly, how it affects everyone around you and then the people around them etc. My one hurtful word or action is a ripple so far reaching you can’t even imagine it. If I stopped to think of that every time I did or said something, I might make different choices.

Today’s lesson was on shenpa or attachment. Shenpa is preverbal...that moment someone says or does something that tightens you up before you say or act after it. It is directly attached to the ego and who you think you are in the world and the more threatened you feel, the stronger shenpa gets. It is literally the charge behind your emotions.  It finds us when we are in places of discomfort and restlessness and boredom,

Understanding this brought me to tears today. I am so full of fear, unnaturally so, and maybe because this particular type of shenpa is so familiar I can taste and smell it. It is not unlike the analogy of wearing destruction like your favorite blanket. You know it is wrong but it is so familiar and comfortable. It gives a false sense of security.

In Buddhism, I have always heard of renunciation which I equated to “giving up” this way of life I am living. I was deep into practice many years ago when I found out I was pregnant. It had taken me a decade to have a kid and I felt supremely attached to this child growing inside me. I eventually moved from the city to a place where being Buddhist meant you were somehow strange and evil and outside the community. I stopped daily practice. I went back to it time and again sad that I didn’t have the courage to renunciate life and walk a road that might make me open and free. Over the years I have practiced more readily. I have found ways to practice invisibly, afraid others would judge me.

Today, after 20 years, I learn that renunciation isn’t about giving up things and ideas and preferences, but it is the act of releasing the firm attachment to them.  Pema writes that when we are able to let go a wisdom becomes accessible to us that is based in compassion for oneself and others that has nothing to do with our ego’s fears.

“Because of shenpa, you get attached to the self-image of failure”- Pema Chodron

Yes, yes I do.

The answer to this is simply Sit. Stay. Heal. Distracting myself from the pain of everything in this world doesn’t make the pain less, it makes it stronger and harder to peel back the layers to get to that sense of peace and openness.  I have been running at a breakneck speed from pain since 2014 when my mother died. It has all tumbled and spiraled into something that has marred and ruined many friendships and relationships in my life. In essence, my shenpa has left me alone grasping to things around me for a sense of self. Fear is such a powerful emotion. It is innate in us for protection from harm, but when we manipulate it and hold it and cherish it, it can destroy possibilities of freedom.

Today, I sit with the pain no matter how awful it feels. I can’t run anymore.

Aleathia Drehmer

Clarity

Aleathia says:

This has been a very interesting time in my life. I am back to school working towards my Master's Degree in Nursing and I applied for the Supervisor position at work. I bought a new car and my once un-involved teenager is now active with after school programs.

All of this has come on the back of my friend and manager leaving our unit, the loss of family and friends, and an intermittently failing thyroid. There is a lot going on to say the least.

The thyroid problem has thrown a monkey wrench in to most of the happenings in my day. It makes me exhausted and lends a lack of ambition to life that can be upsetting. In this whirlwind of things going on, I decided that I was "bored" of my current tenure in the ER of 10 years and that I needed a change. So I applied for college in hopes of moving up the ladder starting with the Assistant Director of Nursing position. It all seemed well and good. I was excited about it.  And then, I wasn't.

I have been fortunate enough to have been afforded my job as a nurse straight out of school due to an internship and scholarship program, so effectively, I never had to fill out a resume or apply or interview for a job. I was expected to work my scholarship off as an employee. When I moved to the ER, I put my union bid in and down I went.  Again, no resume, no interview. In the last few weeks I found myself making a resume (stressful) and studying for an interview, yes, studying (even more stressful) while trying to be a mom, a girlfriend, a good employee, and a student.

Last week at the awards dinner for the hospital, I realized something.  I realized that I was right where I wanted to be sitting across the table from people who have been my family and my team for over 10 years. I didn't want to be at the leadership table. I wanted to be laughing and cracking inappropriate jokes and having a great time. I don't doubt that I would make a good supervisor. I know I can do it, but I had not stopped to ask myself if that was what I really wanted.

One of the supervisors on the evening shift was coaching me about the interview (before I had changed my mind) and she said they would ask where I saw myself in 5 years? I cannot lie.  I don't want to climb the big nursing ladder in the sky and sit in meetings and be a fake version of myself because I was leadership. I want to be me. It has taken me a long time to find out who that is and frankly, I am still learning. When I get my Master's I am thinking that maybe I would like to teach and help new nurses bridge the scary gap between theory and practice and to help them develop the confidence to recognize their abilities to thinking critically and make a difference in the world.  In the end, I want to make a difference. I want my legacy to be something more fulfilling than being good at organization and time management. I want to be remembered as someone who touched another's life and helped them find direction.

These changes were not fly by night. I have been thinking and stressing and thinking more about them for weeks. I have been meditating on it. I have been doing yoga and calming down enough to see beyond the fleeting joy of praise and the initial excitement of a new position that wears off as fast as scratching a losing lottery ticket. At this time in my life, after all the losses I have had, there is still much personal healing to be done. I want to get my education without having another added stress to the pile. I want to have more flexibility for my family and for myself.

Today, I called Human Resources and removed my bid for the job. I can't tell you how light and fantastic a feeling it was. I am blessed to have had these moments of clarity and be able to be brave enough to know when to make the right decisions for myself and not decisions other people want me to make. I love my night nurses and my team. They truly are a second family and they make me a better person every day. I'm just not ready to quit them yet.

Aleathia

4/30/2015 The Light of Day

Aleathia says:

Life is such an interesting journey.  It is just as hard to navigate if you have a good head on your shoulders than if you don't.  One can never foresee all the possible permutations of each decision of each moment.  If you break it down, if you really were cognizant of each decision you might go insane.  This is awareness.  This type of awareness of every thing in this moment, every choice, every breath is what is supposed to move you forward to enlightenment.

I have been sick since Saturday and I am the first to admit that I am a miserable cuss when I am ill.  My poor family has had to suffer my own personal suffering this week.  In hindsight I feel bad about it.  I could have been more aware of my verbal actions and a little less "misery loves company".  But an interesting thing happened.  I walked the dog and came back miserable and short of breath and feeling a little angry that Michael didn't walk the dog for me because I was ill.  Yes, it was my turn, but I was looking for sympathy.  I came back to him watching a documentary on The Buddha.  It was the story of Siddhartha's journey to enlightenment.

I remember learning this story when I first started studying Buddhism in 1997.  It is a great story of struggle and understanding and of finding balance.  Michael is our resident theologian.  He is a man of deep thought and over his lifetime has explored more religions than I knew existed.  He has practiced some of them as well.  He is a fountain of wonder and knowledge to me.  After the documentary was over we started talking about the Dalai Lama and how he has people in the world who hate him.  We both could not understand the reasoning for it.  Maybe those people have their own struggles which bring these types of feelings up.  Michael was interested in the Dalai Lama's journey from Tibet though he wanted a perspective other than what I had to offer, but he gladly started reading the Dalai Lama's autobiography about his exile and his life.

I woke up today in severe pain after only sleeping 4 hours.  My chest didn't hurt as bad but my hip was so painful I could barely move.  I started thinking about how insignificant that pain is compared to what is happening in Nepal and Baltimore or any other place engulfed in suffering in the world.  I cried in the shower, not from pain, but from the fact that I have let myself ride on the wheel of suffering so easily.  The last year and a half has not been easy.  So much was left without closure with my mother's sudden death.  I have been fighting this battle by myself because I won't let anyone else stand by me.  I have gotten so out of balance.  I get angry easy, frustrated, and fly off the handle.  I cry without warning.  I have let myself go physically which causes two kinds of suffering.

This morning I said the refuge prayer and did prostrations and a mala of compassion prayers.  I feel like I found an old friend.  I feel like my best friend gave me back something wonderful when I needed it most.  Maybe I was just ready to hear it again.  Maybe I was tired of spinning uncontrollably.  Whatever it may be, it is a start.

"When we are training in the art of peace, we are not given any promises that because of our noble intentions everything will be okay.  In fact, there are no promises of fruition at all.  Instead, we are encouraged to simply look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, all all that lives and dies.  We learn that what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness."--Pema Chodron

4/6/2015 Living Without an Agenda, poems of the day

Aleathia says:

Ok.  I spent the last two days sweating out fevers, body aches, headache, and abdominal pain on the couch.  I had to miss work which I hate to do, but every time I was up for more than 5 minutes I felt like I was going to pass out.  I slept over 14 hours yesterday and today I wake up feeling a bit washed out, but better than the last few days.  Back to the grind I go.

Today I would like to share an affirmation from Pema Chodron.  Her words often help me get through any of life's problems.  In the work that I do, Emergency Nursing, there is a high probability to get burnt out especially when I work nights.  It is easy to get jaded about the patient's that come in, because often we are treated like waitresses who bust their asses and never get a tip.  We often don't get thanked for waiting on people hand and foot, for wiping their asses, cleaning up their vomit, and making sure we send them out in one piece.  It wears on a soul and yes we get edgy and judgmental at times.  There was a case recently where I wasn't as compassionate as I could have been.  I wasn't mean, but I didn't believe the patient's opinion of the situation and that person ended up having something wrong with them.  I am the first to stand up when I make a mistake at work.  I feel bad that I acted that way, because I am usually very intuitive and understanding.

As I have been sick, I was thinking about this person that I wronged and today I read this passage from Pema Chodron:

"Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space where we're not entirely certain about who's right and who's wrong?  Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person, not make the person wrong or right?  Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are?  It is powerful to practice this way,  because we'll find ourselves continually rushing around to try to feel secure again--to make ourselves or them either right or wrong.  But true communication can happen only in that open space."--Pema Chodron



The poem for 4/5/2015 had a prompt of "vegetable":

Warm Tomatoes on the Vine

My child's mind
is tenacious
unforgiving,
her world concrete
and literal
once the daily
imagination faded.

She speaks of her Nana rarely
though she knew her well enough
before she passed.

When my mother died
she didn't cry
and it crushed me.

Where had I gone wrong
that she didn't understand
the magnitude of what had happened?

Last summer, out of nowhere,
she began to sob about how
she would never get to garden
with her Nana again
or eat warm cherry tomatoes
from the vine while she smoked
cigarettes and drank beer.

She wouldn't get to learn how
to keep slugs away or when to plant beans.

I couldn't say a word
but hugged her tight,
let her have that moment
to feel her grief
I was sure hadn't existed.

Aleathia Drehmer 2015

April 5, 2015

and the prompt for today is "something not as it seems":

Secret Society

On the outside
he’s blunt,
often grouchy.

My daughter tip-toes
around him in these moods,
has learned silence a virtue.

She never mentions it,
she knows this is who he is...
intelligent,
impatient,
and analytical
knowing he is always there
to educate and keep safe
secrets she cannot tell me.

They don't hug.
Instead fist bump
and say niceties
to each other.

I can't ask for more
between my child
and a step dad.
I remember
so much worse
from my own
experience.

On Easter he brought her home a basket.
She was stunned and inside there was a card
that made her cheeks cherry and give him a hug.

Later I asked what was in the card
and he told me to never mind that.
“If she wanted you to know,
 she'd have shared. “

He smiled to himself.
He likes to be what people
           think he isn't.
It keeps us guessing
and always wanting
him even more.

Aleathia Drehmer 2015

April 6, 2015

OM-11/30/2014 Rejoicing In Things As They Are, Pema Chodron

Aleathia says:

I am a creature of habit.  Habit is comfortable to most and it is when we move away from that comfort that learning happens, change happens, and most often personal dysfunction because we have continually done things the same way.

Having said this, change is hard for me.  I always welcome new ideas and changes, but even knowing they are coming throws me for a loop.  It breeds a sense of chaos in me like no other.  I sometimes even get depressed about it.  In essence, I believe I go through a grief process when large changes happen.  This turmoil is normally followed by laughing at myself for being unreasonable and pouty before I move forward fully embracing whatever change is on the table.

I was reading from Pema Chodron's "Taking the Leap" today under the section "Rejoicing In Things As They Are" and this seemed right on for the day:

"When we begin to see clearly what we do, how we get hooked and swept away by old habits, our usual tendency is to use that as a reason to get discouraged, a reason to feel really bad about ourselves.  Instead, we could realize how remarkable it is that we actually have the capacity to see ourselves honestly, and that doing this takes courage.  It is moving in the direction of seeing our life as a teacher rather than as a burden.  This involves, fundamentally, learning to stay present, but learning to stay with a sense of humor, learning to stay with loving-kindness toward ourselves and with the outer situation, learning to take joy in the magic ingredient of honest self-reflection."

OM-9/14/2014 Open Communication

Aleathia says:

"Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space where we're not entirely certain about who's right and who's wrong?  Could we have no agenda when we walk into, room with another person, not know what to say, not make that person wrong or right?  Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are?  It is powerful to practice this way, because we'll find ourselves continually rushing around to try to feel secure again--to make ourselves or them either right or wrong.  But true communication can happen only in that space."--Pema Chodron

This concept is pretty deep on the inside if you think about it.  We are a society driven by what is right and wrong and rarely do we linger in that space that something just is what it is.  Having a touch of OCD this free form approach to communication poses so many problems to me.  I am literally an old dog that will have to learn new tricks.

I have been thinking about my mother a lot the last few days. She and I did not see eye to eye most of the time and this was because our perspective on life has always been different.  She jumped into the fire and I have always waited until the smoke cleared.  One of us had to be right and one of us had to be wrong.

My goal this week is to try and communicate this way to see if it opens more doors than closes them.

OM-9/7/2014 Loneliness

Aleathia says:

For some reason this week I've felt incredibly lonely.  I have had people around me that I love and who love me back, but I can't seem to shake that sense of being utterly alone.  I have turned to my faith for understanding or clarification of what is really going on.  Sometimes I put a recording in my head that isn't true or warranted.  This is an old habit of spinning the wheel and watching suffering turn and turn.  It is preventable though sometimes I let it happen for unknown reason.  It feels worse when I try to dig myself out of it for some reason so sitting still in the pain of it is often the best bet.

"Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy.  Heartache is not something we choose to invite in.  It's restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down." --Pema Chodron "Loneliness"

OM-8/24/2014 Pema Chodron, Smile at Fear

Aleathia says:

In the last week or so my thyroid has been malfunctioning which causing me to have a host of problems especially extreme fatigue, unwarranted depression, increased irritability, body aches and an inability to concentrate.  It is very frustrating.  It renders very small problems into unfathomable mountains to scale.  This is hard not only on me, but on my family.  It is hard to explain to them what is going on.  It is like life exists in thick walls of jello.  It is hard to move through.  It is sticky and unpleasant.  It is hard to see reality through this veil and everything seems like a burden.  A tiny pill changes these symptoms.  I have to jump through the hoops to get it and will most likely have to wait until Monday before I can get in to see the doctor and get blood work etc.

Again, Pema Chodron helps.  Enjoy her talk on smiling at fear and living from the heart.

OM-6/29/2014 The Importance of Pain

Aleathia says:

The Importance of Pain

"Before we can know what natural warmth really is, often we must experience loss.  We go along for years moving through our days, propelled by habit, taking life pretty much for granted.  Then we or someone dear to us has an accident or gets seriously ill, and it's as if blinders have been removed from our eyes.  We see the meaninglessness of so much of what we do and the emptiness of so much we cling to.

When my mother died and I was asked to go through her personal belongings, this awareness hit me hard.  She had kept boxes of papers and trinkets that she treasured, things that she held on to through her many moves to smaller and smaller accommodations.  They had represented security and comfort for her, and she had been unable to let them go.  Now they were just boxes of stuff, things that held no meaning and represented no comfort or security to anyone.  For me these were just empty objects, yet she had clung to them.  Seeing this made me sad, and also thoughtful.  After that I could never look at my own treasured objects in the same way.  I had seen that things themselves are just what they are, neither precious nor worthless, and that all the labels, all our views and opinions about them, are arbitrary."

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

This passage was especially helpful to me when my own mother passed and I faced looking through her things.  Many of the items sent to me were of no meaning to me, not like they were to my mother, but I could sense she loved them.  Loss is the great equalizer.  It sets the balance in the world and it wakes you up. There are still moments that catch me off guard for no apparent reason and I am put to tears.  Life is precious. Be thankful every day for the world around you.

OM-5/25/2014 Buddism, Change

Aleathia says:

My dog irritates me on the early morning walk so generally I choose to fill this time with words of peace and wisdom.  I listen to videos of Buddhist teachers.  Most of the time I can relate with what they are saying and the information is a good reminder of my already solid understanding of certain basic concepts.  Sometimes I listen to them and get a proverbial punch in the face.

Earlier in the week I listened to a talk by Pema Chodron called "Fearless Non-theism".  It crushed me in so many ways.  For 3-4 straight days, I listened to this talk and continued to be floored by it and reminded of how weak I am when we get down to brass tacks.

"Fearless Non-theism" by Pema Chodron

The great thing about this talk and most of Pema's talks is that you don't really need to be a Buddhist to get them.  This talk in particular expands across any gender, race, religion, political, and emotional barrier.  It is truth, raw stinky truth.

Here is the text if you want to get down to the nitty gritty:

The difference between theism and non-theism is not whether one does or does not believe in

God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including both Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there is some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there is always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We all are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Non-theism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves. We sometimes think that dharma is something outside of ourselves, something to believe in, something to measure up to. However, dharma isn't a belief; it isn't a dogma. It is total appreciation of impermanence and change. The teachings disintegrate when we try to grasp them. We have to experience them without hope. Many brave and compassionate people have experience them and taught them. The message is fearless; dharma was never meant to be a belief that we blindly follow. Dharma gives us nothing to hold on to at all.

Non-theism is finally realizing that there is no baby sitter that you can count on. You just get a good one and then he or she is gone. Non-theism is realizing that it's not just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.

For those who want something to hold on to, life is even more inconvenient. From this point of view, theism is an addiction. We're all addicted to hope, hope that the doubt and mystery will go away. This addiction has a painful effect on society: a society based on lots of people addicted to getting ground under their feet is not a very compassionate place.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as we're addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot.

Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can't simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.

This is where renunciation enters the picture, renunciation of the hope that we could be better. The Buddhist monastic rules that advise renouncing liquor, renouncing sex, and so on are not pointing out that those things are inherently bad or immoral, but that we use them as babysitters. We use them as a way to escape; we use them to try to get comfort and to distract ourselves. The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are. Renunciation is teaching to inspire us to investigate what's happening every time we grab something because we can't stand to face what's coming.

If hope and fear are two sides on one coin, so are hopelessness and confidence. If we're willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path. If there is no interest in stepping beyond hope and fear, then there's no meaning in taking refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. Taking refuge in Buddha, dharma, and sangha is about giving up hope of getting ground under our feet. We are ready to take refuge when this style of teaching, whether we feel completely up to it or not, is like hearing something hauntingly familiar, like the experience of a child meeting its mother after a long separation.

Hopelessness is the basic ground. Otherwise, we're going to make the journey with the hope of getting security. If we make the journey to get security, we're completely missing the point. We can do our meditation practice with the hope of getting security; we can study the teachings with the hope of getting security; we can follow all the guidelines and instructions with the hope of getting security; but it will only lead to disappointment and pain. We could save ourselves a lot of time by taking this message very seriously right now. Begin the journey without hope of getting ground under your feet. Begin with hopelessness.

All anxiety, all dissatisfaction, all the reasons for hoping that our experience could be different are rooted in our fear of death. Fear of death is always in the background. As the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said, life is like getting into a boat that's just about to sail out to sea and sink. But it's very hard, no matter how much we hear about it, to believe in our own death. Many spiritual practices try to encourage us to take our own death seriously, but it's amazing how difficult it is to allow it to hit home. That one thing in life that we can really count on is incredibly remote for all of us. We don't go so far as to say, "No way, I'm not going to die," because of course we know that we are. But it definitely will be later. That's the biggest hope.

Trungpa Rinpoche once gave a public lecture titled "Death in Everyday Life." We are raised in a culture that fears death and hides it from us. Nevertheless, we experience it all the time. We experience it in the form of disappointment, in the form of things not working out. We experience it in the form of things always being in a process of change. When the day ends, when the second ends, when we breathe out, that's death in everyday life.

Death in everyday life could also be defined as experiencing all the things that we don't want. Our marriage isn't working; our job isn't coming together. Having a relationship with death in everyday life means that we begin to be able to wait, to relax with insecurity, with panic, with embarrassment, with things not working out. As the years go on, we don't call the babysitter quite so fast.

Death and hopelessness provide proper motivation, proper motivation for living an insightful, compassionate life. But most of the time, warding off death is our biggest motivation. We habitually ward off any sense of problem. We're always trying to deny that it's a natural occurrence that things change, that the sand is slipping through our fingers. Time is passing. It's as natural as the seasons changing and day turning into night. But getting old, getting sick, losing what we love, we don't see those events as natural occurrences. We want to ward off that sense of death, no matter what.

Excerpted from When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Difficult Times,

by Pema Chodron, Shambhala Publications, 1997, pp. 38-45.

Om-5/4/2014 Buddhism, Fearlessness

Aleathia says:

As I have mentioned many times before the start to this year has been very rough due to the loss of my mother.  It is something I have begun to really work on...working through the fear of not knowing what life will be like without her, how it will affect my daughter in the long run, and not knowing when the pain will subside enough to move forward.  I don't want to spend the rest of my life on the wheel getting no where in my spirituality.  I could definitely practice more, but I'm starting small.  When I jump in with both feet and rush head long, I usually lose my steam and I wander much more quickly.

I chose a talk on fear and fearlessness this week, because I think it is very important.  If we stop and think about it, fear drives most of our decisions.  We speak and act in certain ways because we fear what this person or that person will say and think about us in reference to choices we have made.  This is an impossible way to live your life.  It is stressful and I feel, from previous experience, that it drains the life out of you always living in a state of panic.

Michelle and I were conversing the other day about bad times and how they just take over everything.  She said to me "I need peace in my heart and quick".  My response was "Peace doesn't come quick."  I felt grounded for a moment, because I have learned this lesson.  In the world of hurry up and get it done, peace isn't something you can snap your fingers and stumble upon.  It takes work to invite the fear in enough to see around it and find a sense of peace.

Fear and Fearlessness by Pema Chodron

In this video, Pema Chodron gives a teaching on fear and fearlessness.  She talks about moments in time where we have the opportunity to choose wakefulness and sanity which allows us to connect with courage and bravery or the opportunity to choose violence and aggression.  I think in general we forget we have these choices.  I think we move so fast in today's world that we don't light long enough to give it a chance to work out.

My favorite quote from this video:

"The only way to experience fearlessness was to know the nature of fear.  Fear is not something we got rid of or cast out, but that we became very intimate with and came to know so well that the journey of knowing fear, moving closer to fear, was in fact the journey of courage, the journey of bravery."

We Meet at the Forked Road

Welcome to The Forked Road.  This is going to be a journey that neither of us really know where it will end up, but are sharing it in hopes that it will not only bring us closer together as friends and women, but maybe help inspire people to be creative in whatever capacity they have and to share lessons in life as we learn them from two different perspectives.

In the last month, I have been really losing my brains over the death of my mother and Michelle has gone through the loss of a relationship.  Both of us searching for a way to make the pain stop and to somehow quit walking the same damn circle over and over and over again.  We wanted to be present in our lives, not just existing...barely.

The both of us are intelligent women.  We know what we want in the world, we are kind, we are funny, we are creative, and we have in some way been abused.  Many of us have.  This abuse does not make us special, but it is how we approach our lives after abuse that speaks to our nature.

17 years ago I met a man named Daniel in Seattle and got invited to a Tibetan New Year festival.  I went not knowing what to expect and had an experience that changed my life.  I started studying Buddhism and practicing with a teacher.  I went on a 10 day retreat in the woods and was headed, quite possibly, for a path that was mired deep in spirituality so much so that I was considering abandoning my life at the time in devotion.  Then, I got pregnant and my path changed.  Buddhism stayed with me, but I moved to a rural community that was primarily Christian so my practice came from books and solitary understanding.  In the last year or so, I have been lost.

Last week, Michelle sent me a video of a Buddhist therapist going over the very basics of The Four Noble Truths.  I had learned them so many years ago.  They are the basis of everything and I had forgotten their power to center.

Four Noble Truths: Buddha's Psychology of Freedom by Dr. Miles Neale

Aleathia: I listened to this video on my phone, shortly after sunrise, while walking the dog.  It really crushed me and had me in tears by the end.  I had forgotten everything.  I had let myself get spun in the wheel without any notice and I was tangled deep and drowning.  I have been to that place many times and thought I had fully gotten out each time, but that morning I realized that I had left one foot in wheel all the time.  This video has set me back on track to where I need to be.  It will be a long journey, but one I am ready to start again.

Michelle: A friend suggested I watch this video a few weeks ago when I was waist deep despair. I haven't been the same since that night. I started a strict meditation practice a few months ago and it was this information that I was missing. This basic understanding was what I lacked even though I read countless books on Buddhism. It's refreshing to hear the breakdown, in an endearing way, while linking the psychology/neuroscience at the root of study. I immediately felt empowered and immensely grateful. "Don't take for granted your perception of reality", he states.

Heartbroken, living out of a suitcase, life in a storage unit, negative thoughts swirling around my head, searching for refuge in my soul. Then it was clear, all this can change. I decided to be committed to myself, maybe for the first time in my life. I am excited and grateful to be on this journey.


Aleathia's current spiritual reading material:

This book has really supported what the teaching on the Four Noble Truths reminded me of.  I am not finished with it, but it has helped to make me more mindful in this time of change when everything in my life has been altered and I am learning to flow with the changes instead of crumble. Having a book to reference makes all the groundless moments seem possible to tread.



Michelle's current spiritual reading material:

I read this book 2 years ago and after viewing this video I went out immediately and started it again. I have found amazing strength within that I was not tapping into. This book gets deep within the processes of how the brain effects thought, strategies for rewiring your head, meditations, tips for calming the body, explaining how this is a neuroscience, all while using Buddhist teachings as a guide.

I have found myself feeling more in control of thoughts and have been practicing everyday to change my perception about what pops into my head. When have a thought like "my life is a mess, my relationship is over, I am so sad and angry", I replace it with an antidote immediately. I think of how I am not in that relationship anymore and that I'm facing a new direction. I think about the wonderful people I have in my life, and how they know all my parts and love me. I make my brain think of all the things that are beautiful in my life right at that moment. The list is long. Practicing the skill of replacing negative with positive is making new grooves in my gray matter. It is a disciplined practice and we are all worth the effort. It is life changing.

Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoy the video and feel compelled to check out a few books.  Blessings.

Aleathia and Michelle