Tuesday, May 30, 2006

blood on my hands

i've gotten three bloody noses in the past 4 days. i can't tell you the last time (before these episodes) that my nose bled. i mean, i've woken up in the morning with dry nostrils and maybe a little bit of blood in my snot, but this is different. The first time it happened i was driving my truck at 50 mph on a winding, shoulderless road. i noticed something warm on my lip, and then PLOP! a drop of deep red liquid hit my lap. I put my palm to my nose and drew it back. It was filled with blood. I couldn't pull over anywhere, but fortunately, i had a passenger, who responded without shock, fear, or alarm (in fact, she continued talking as if nothing strange were happening) by passing me sheet after sheet of newspaper. i decorated the news with three pages of blood. i was a little freaked out. i knew it was probably dry air and altitude, but i couldn't dismiss the idea that my brain was hemmoraging. however, after about 5 minutes, it all stopped. besides the smears of blood covering my hands, arms and face, and the crimson speckles dappling my blue shirt, and the taste of iron at the back of my tongue, there was no evidence that anything violent had happened.

yet somehow, i felt assaulted. especially when it happened again, at work when i was picking up a box of vegetables to put into the walk-in, and today, when i was walking down the streets of durango, past dozens of people who tried not to stare at my bloody hands and face. why was this happening to me?? here i am, just trying to do my job, just keeping to myself, and BAM! there's blood everywhere.

after today's incident, i drove home and watched the blood dry on the back of my hands. just a few moments earlier that blood had been inside my body, pumped from my heart and through many blood vessels into my head, before it dashed through my nose and into my view. i guess i don't think about blood all that much--how it circulates through my body, keeping me vital and alive, and full of possibility. i don't think about the messages it sends, via nutrients and chemicals, to all the individual cells that make up my physical existence. i don't consider how it unites me with the present and prepares me for the future through the simple act of receiving from the heart, sharing with the cells, and returning to the heart.

i've been taking my life for granted. i've been letting the things around me shape my days. i haven't been balancing the external life with that which is inside me. i haven't listened to my pulsing heart repeatedly telling me: You Are Alive! You are Love! You are the source of your own reality!!

there's no denying when there's blood on your hands.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

receiving

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

plenty of room for something else

so, i've been meditating a lot recently. i don't consider myself very good at it, however. so even though i have many many experiences with it all, it's often very indescribable, or if there are words for it, they're so esoteric that it'd be pointless to try to convey it here. but today i had one of those experiences that i MUST TRY to put to words, because it literally changed my perspective on EVERYTHING.

initially for me, mediation was most difficult because i had to sit with my thoughts, and notice them. i have a lot of voices in my head, saying all sorts of Not-So-Nice things, about me, about what i need to do, what someone else needs to be blamed for, or why everything is so hopeless. (i'm sure my previous blogs reveal NOTHING of these thoughts, ha ha!). but that's just the brain part. see, the actual physical aspect of sitting meditation is painful. it's worse than sitting in a wooden pew at church, even, because at church you can distract yourself with whatever the minister is saying, or the bad outfit of the woman sitting in front of you, or by flipping through the hymnal with all those good harmonies in it. in meditation, you just sit. with your thoughts, with your breath, with your aches and pains and internal everything that wants attention. and guess what? sometimes you end up having to pay it some attention.

it's all good, though, because you start to see the patterns you fall into, or the places where pain (emotional, physical, relationship or otherwise) recurs. again and again. and sometimes that gives you access to determining what you want to do about it (let it go, send it love, see a chiropractor, etc).

sometimes it's really hard to sit through physical pain though. it's like having to pee when you're on the subway, and your 9 stops away from the one place you know you can pee sanitarily. fortunately, today i was given another option.

when i look at it, i usually see my pain as a block in the flow of energy in my body. it aches, and often feels like all my energy is pooling up and putting pressure on the rest of my system. today, i felt it in my elbows and my spine. it was terribly uncomfortable until it was suggested that i go to another plane and look at that block of pain from a different perspective. so i took my pain and broke it down into subatomic particles. light flooded into the billions of spaces that were now visible inside my ball of spinal pain, and energy started flowing with it. my ouchy grew warm and tingly. i watched the rest of my muscles around my spine split into subatomic particles, too, and the light and warmth spread. suddenly, my pain was imperceptible from the rest of my body. In fact, my body didn't really feel like my body normally did, although i knew i was still in my body and experiencing things through it. eventually, i started reacquainting myself with everything i knew was there--my heart, with its pulse at the center of my circulatory system, my lungs, with their rise and fall, my spine as the stem of my skeletal system, and all the other physical sensations i've known for 32 years came back as well. i could feel the pain return in my side, and in my back. but i knew something different about it now, too, and i knew that it didn't have to feel that way, and suddenly, it didn't hurt so much.

i've practiced this concept on a conscious level with my thoughts and emotions, but never so much with my body. but really, how much do our preconceived ideas about our actions, our relationships, and other daily events differ from our ideas about our bodies and our physical pain? go on, try it out. it's fantastic. next thing you know, you'll be chopping through wood with your hands.

Monday, May 08, 2006

no denying

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

ghee

i made indian food today at work. AGAIN. i have to make it every wednesday. last week i couldn't stand the taste of it. this week, i decided i'd just put more love into it, because what else can i do?
so i carefully acknowledged every ingredient that went into my saag paneer, from the spinach and ginger all the way to the tumeric and coriander. when it came time to cook it all, i plopped a hunk of ghee into the pan, and thought about it as it melted.

ghee. clarified butter. butter without the undissolvable milk solids that prevent it from taking on more heat. butter that can withstand all sorts of denaturing elements, and still remain capable of doing what it orginally intended to do: bring out and enhance the true goodness in everything it contacts, with clarity and stability.

who needs human role models? i aspire to be more like ghee.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

peace palette