Suffering

I'm sitting here in my bed, right next to Friday, who has claimed one flannel-covered pillow for his own. He's purring and not purring, off and on, and looking up toward the ceiling. Something is in the attic, skittering around. Sounds like a squirrel, too big for a mouse. Right around the time that Familiar kitty was passing, I heard squirrels in the attic - or on the roof, not sure which - all the time. I haven't heard any for a few weeks, though, not until the last couple days. Friday looks so puzzled, his eyes following the skittering beyond the ceiling. I wonder how they get in there!

In the midst of the darkest week I've had in a long time, I did manage to get to yoga class...not one, not two, but three. In spite of the anger and frustration and sadness that have been the most prevalent emotions this week, there is some little voice within me that says, "hey, this used to really be good - do it now!" I'm going to trust that, and also have no expectations.

Yesterday, one of my dismal posts on Facebook asked what people thought life was about. One man replied that life is about learning through suffering. His words hit home right away. I seem to recall that his kitty passed the day before Familiar kitty - so he is surely going through some of the same feelings I have. Learning through suffering. I've sure been feeling the suffering part, but I have wondered all day what it is that I'm learning here...or resisting learning...

One thing that I am clearly resisting learning is that fingers are for loving kitties...not typing! Friday has relocated to my right knee, pushing my keyboard off to the left, and keeps insisting his head under my typing fingers, clearly showing me what really matters. Bless this being. Bless him. He is the best teacher I've got right now, that's for sure. He's given me a reprieve for the moment, and has moved on to licking my hand as I write here.

Suffering. Everything and everyone that I love will leave, die, fall apart. That is the very truth of living, and the very truth of suffering. The more I love, the more pain I will feel when the loving is interrupted. So, there's a part of me (and I doubt I'm alone here) that says "fuck it! What's the point anyway?!" Why love if it's going to hurt so much later. But the truth is that I feel things really big, really deeply. And I've done enough intense, deep spiritual work that there's no turning back now. There's no shutting the door to my heart. It just doesn't make sense, it's no longer an option. And in the reality of that, suffering seems to be the only option. And I think the reason I've been feeling so angry this week is that that really sucks! So, the more I open my heart, the more pain I'm going to feel. Great. Check please...

Today as I was driving in the pouring rain in Baltimore - feeling supremely bitter and pissed off - I thought of two things. First, if life is nothing more than waking up, eating, pooping, and sleeping again, with maybe a bit of working for money thrown in, then FUCK IT! I'm not playing anymore. I will lay in bed all day and piss myself and shit my pants and starve first. I know, it sounds ridiculous. But what's behind that madness and anger is outrage - that I demand that life be more than this, that I absolutely insist that my life have meaning. And that's probably a blessing - the energy of anger pushing through the murk of sorrow. Second, the thought came to me that in spite of the devastation of experiencing death steal away the life of my little buddy while he was in my arms, I have not died. And there is part of me that feels guilty for that, that while my little kitty is gone from this world forever I am here, and am supposed to continue living. But besides that guilty part that feels like I shouldn't go on living, that I should lay in my bed and shit my pants until I die too, there is another part that says, "hey, I'm still here..." and wants to LIVE out loud, fully, richly, just like I always have. One voice says, "shit, get over this, you're wasting your own sweet, precious life!" And another says, "this pain is so deep, you will never survive it."

And beyond those voices and those feelings, there is the sunrise and the sunset, and rain and wind and clouds and starlight, and sunshine. And there is a Magnolia tree watching over the decaying body of a being that was once my dear friend. And that dear friend is probably still lingering somewhere nearby, waiting to show me what I'm supposed to learn next from this whole ordeal.

He came to me in my dreams three nights in a row this week. Once, I was in a high school classroom, with other people who I went to high school with - and there he was, trying to squirm out of my arms, trying to get out into the hallway and explore. Another dream, I was obsessing about his losing weight and being super skinny. I can't recall the other one, exactly. But what was so lovely was touching him - the sensation of having his body in contact with me - that has been what I have longed for and missed so desperately. In spite of all the esoteric teachings - and my own experience - that say that the body is only a shell for the Spirit, it is my full experience in this reality that I relate to other beings by touch, by speaking, by sight and sound - through the physical senses. That is so hard to let go of.

So, what am I learning here through this suffering? A question to continue pondering...

Feeling Lost

I don't like spending time with the dark parts of myself. I am a being who is usually very much drawn to the light. I'm not talking about day and night here, but inner realms and experience. I am not drawn to negativity, pessimism, depression, or hopelessness. Not that I don't experience them in my life, because surely I do. But I am naturally drawn to joy, optimism, love, and effervescence. Angela "Blueskies" is hugely fitting to the state of being that is most natural to me. But it's been quite a while since I inhabited those states of being on a regular basis. My name right now may as well be Angela "Thundercloud."

Anger has been barging its way into the hopelessness and sadness these last few days. At first, I thought it was coming along with my cycle, the usual anger and aggression that often accompany it. But this has lingered and intensified. There is a track in my mind that feels like a tiger, waiting silently, patiently to strike to kill anyone who crosses me in the slightest way. This part imagines confrontations, and imagines scenarios and outcomes that involve tremendous violence in words and actions. Now, I haven't been acting upon any of these scenarios, but I have been watching them, especially these last couple days. I haven't even seen any point in leaving the house. It seems that when I do, unbelievably frustrating things happen.

The question that has been a recurrent mantra in my mind has been "what is the fucking point of any of this?!" I feel like a hamster stuck on a wheel, or at least in a little shitty cage. But I KNOw that I'm that hamster, stuck on a pointless fucking wheel, inside a prison of a shitty cage, and I KNOW that there's more outside of it, and yet I can't seem to find the way.

I have experienced firsthand - in ceremony and in meditation and in community - the most incredible beauty in this world, in this life. I have felt the sublime power of love. I have felt held in the womb of Mother Earth. I have seen things I couldn't have ever believed, and felt things that called into question everything that I have ever known. And in spite of all of that, the death of Familiar kitty has marked life with a heavy darkness. And part of that darkness has disconnected me from those truths that come from living in the Light. I remember them as a novel right now...characters and scenes from a life that are bound to the page, yet not my own.

I posted a question on Facebook the other day: "What gets you out of bed in the morning?" The answers that I received were depressing beyond my imaginings. I also had included an aside to that question, "besides the alarm clock or coffee," hoping to suggest I was looking for the *meaning* of getting out of bed in the morning. Not once person who answered went there. The answers? The dog, the cat, the kid, hunger, needing to pee. And honestly, these are the things that I have been feeling in my life, lately, too. Never before have I felt like I got out of bed for food or a piss. I got out of bed because the light of day pulled my spirit into the world to LIVE. But right now, I am feeling that I, too, get up to eat, poop, and sleep again. And after living my life from a place of intense meaning and connection, living with these things as my drives is the most devastating thing I have ever known.

I cannot wake up in the morning and get out of bed if all there is to my life is eating, pooping, making money, and sleeping again. If that's all there is, then let me die right fucking now.

I already know, somewhere deep inside of me, that there is way, way more to life. But when I try to go there, it's as if I'm dumb or something. Like the part of me that knows that has been blocked off somehow. And yet the question, the longing remains. I know that a new pair of fuzzy boots is a great thing, but it doesn't give meaning to my day. Stuff doesn't give meaning to my day. Material things don't give meaning to my day. Their absence can be a pain in the ass, for sure - as it was tonight, when I discovered that the tape deck in my car no longer works, and that is what I use to play my Ipod - but that's not living and dying. It's a fucking tape deck. And the boots are fucking boots. I also know that getting rich and buying a fancy car and house won't give meaning to my life. It's just more stuff that might make me "comfortable" and make me feel "abundant" but it's essentially just more garbage.

What about finding a partner and having a family? While these things certainly do add some sense of meaning to life, undoubtedly, and provide some sense of structure to daily living that is rooted in living communally, when it comes down to it, unless the deeper meaning of life is clear first, these things just become another path toward material living. Getting the right stuff for the couple, getting the right stuff for the kid. And good god, raising a kid in a material paradigm? That makes me want to die, too...

Anything external, really, is guaranteed NOT to add meaning to life. Those things are just distractions. It's the inner stuff that really gives meaning to my day. And it's relationships, too, the ways that these inner worlds of people (and animals) come together and create the world together. And right now, I am feeling betrayed by that. All those years of loving, and one day it's all gone. It's as if it never happened - except in my heart, that is. How is that fair??? When I go down this track of thinking, then I feel like there's no point to life at all, we're just waiting around to die. And it's no fucking wonder that all the religions have made up things like "heaven." That's the greatest comfort ever, believing that at the end of the line, we'll be reunited all together in one big angelic party, with harps and clouds and that crap. I don't buy it for a minute.

The Buddhists really do lay it all out with no bullshit. Change happens constantly, and there is no external God to believe in. All we can do is accept that everything is going to fall apart, and love in spite of that, with as much compassion as possible. Life is going to pull the rug out from under us again and again. And eventually, it will be our very own body that has the rug pulled out from under it. As much as I try, I can't find anything in that that encourages me to embrace a spiritual path even more fully than before. If anything, I feel inclined to come back to my original question: "what's the point anyway?" I don't buy into any of that heaven and angels crap, and haven't since I was a child. The coddling of religion offers me no solace at all. But I have been spiritually motivated for years - right now, I can't even feel connected to that.

Well, at least I am walking in circles with the question...

Body and Beyond

It is a cold evening, but I am still keeping my windows open. Fall is blowing in more every day, and tonight I walked in crunchy fallen leaves for the first time this season. Today was filled with goodness. I joined some dear friends at the Maryland Renaissance Festival for a day of merriment and togetherness, and it was probably the best thing I could have done. After so much seriousness, so much sorrow, and so much intensity, it was a blessing to just be in the sunshine, to follow the flow of the day, the flow of conversation. To allow myself to be carried by the experience, without having any goals or particular demands on me. And the sunshine was warm and soothing, a balm on my whole being.

At one point today, Sarah and I were talking about death and the intensity of that. She had overheard others at the festival talking about next year when they would come back. And she offered her own thoughts about impermanence, that people count so much on "next year" or "next time" but the truth is that there are no guarantees. That all we have is right now. This touched deeply into my own feelings and what I have experienced in the last week. Indeed, I have no way of knowing when this body and mind will come to their end.

It is funny...in all the ceremonies I have done, I have faced the limits of body and mind, over and over. And I have been taken into the most incredible space of transcendence - within this space, I have been shown beyond any doubt that I am far, far more than my body and mind. I know that in the depth of me. But there is something in the struggle of eventually relinquishing the physical that really distresses me. In my first Ayahuasca ceremonies, I knew that I would be asked to face things that were really intense and scary and difficult, and I had all the courage in the world to go into that. But there was deep fear about the physical suffering - the purging, the strangeness in my body. And I can see how this is connected to the distress I feel about dying to the body, too. While I know that I am far more than flesh and bones and monkey mind, these are the things that I experience life through. I am a being that experiences livingness through sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and intuitive perception. I have a body that offers me these sensory perceptions. These things are the way I relate to myself and to others. So much of my life is involved in caring for this body and mind, too. Eating, sleeping, bathing, moving, reading...it goes on and on...

And even as I write here, I have some deep sense of how small these things are in relation to the great big Divineness of the universe. Am I so attached to the little things, such as drinking tea and brushing my teeth, and taking a shower, and cooking, and shaving my legs? The part of me that likes to be deep and philosophical says, "no, of course not..." but the part of me that is more honest says, "yes, actually. This is all we know..." And in some way that is the truth of if. But I have experienced the greater reality! I know that place too! I suppose what I am realizing right now is that these two ways of knowing and living are not integrated yet. Can I hold the transcendent within my body during the mundane activities? And can I bring the truth of my mundane needs into my life within the Divine? This is something worth sitting with, for sure.

One more piece of it is this - for all the years that I have not felt grounded or had much desire to think about my body at all, in this moment I am really feeling what a precious thing life is, body especially. This body is an amazing gift through which I can perceive and experience all the other ways that God has come into livingness upon this Earth. What an incredible gift indeed. And I am feeling a renewed desire to really care for my body in every way that I can. Eating nourishing things, walking, yoga, massage and acupuncture, and whatever else appears to be necessary to give it what it needs.

The mind is such a hungry vulture, though...wanting all the attention, all the care given to it. Feed me knowledge, feed me curiosities, feed me literature and science and history and and and and... On and on it goes, its hunger is insatiable. It bats away the body, saying, "yeah, yeah, later..." This is my experience, for sure. The body is merely a vehicle for the head to get its needs met. And what a lie! Actually, the body has its needs, and the mind has its needs, and the heart has its needs, and the spirit has its needs. And all must be met each day in order to live a life that is fulfilled and whole. I have fed my mind and spirit far more than my body and my heart for most of my life. And now that my heart is getting its due, my body is shyly stepping up and saying, "um, is it possible that I, too, might be cared for?" And the answer is yes, oh yes. Yes, oh yes.