Passing the Test

Thursday, July 30th


My father keeps struggling after his return from the hospital. It's now been five weeks and he is weaker than a couple of days after the surgery. Ted has worked on him twice without any lasting results, I have tried to help him via other channels, through Byron Katie's work, and just talking and being there and holding him in nothing but love and trust and knowing that this too shall pass... as his condition remains the same... week after week.

Mami, interestingly, has tapped into an unexpected source of strength feeding her. Throughout this period of non-recovery she has been remarkably strong, without doubt or despair. She, who felt so weak in April, who was sure she wouldn't survive the summer herself... now is able to take care of Papi and the house and the garden and the shopping and the cooking and the cleaning without ever running on empty. She is resting in the knowledge that he will get better. She also firmly believes that for some undiscovered reason this is something he has to go through. He wants to believe this too, but it is so damn hard for him... all this weakness, all this numbness, all this pain in his skin, and his back, the ringing in his ears, the intestines so sluggish, the appetite for food so small... the body's troubles keep him from sleeping well... and this lack of good sleep has now accumulated since they first put a tube into the old kidney when I was there in May... that's over two(!) months ago... a long time to be losing sleep. He tries to catch a glimpse of: why, oh WHY is this happening to him... again...??? and receives no answer... he envies Mami's and my ability to communicate and receive guidance and resolution and an understanding of purpose for what is there in front of us... but no matter how hard he tries, he can't receive such messages, can't create such lasting peace of mind.

Oh, I feel with him. There is a peculiar added layer to his suffering, a part within me that feels I should be able to find something that helps him. If I can't reach him through the Journey, why isn't there something else showing up that works? And... is it for me to find that for him? As it is I can do nothing but reassure him that what IS, must be right. That has become my conviction through my experiences.

Last night Mami received one of her messages through her Christ energy. She heard: he has passed the test, now he can recover and he will. She heard: I too have passed the test. Papi is relieved to some degree, much of him trusts these messages that come through to Mami, mysterious as this source that communicates to her is to him, it is so close to him, it speaks out of her mouth, and in her loving voice. But... He doesn't know what the test was.

I myself wonder if for my part this was another exercise to let go too, to come anew face to face with my desire to relieve suffering, and to have to just... let it be. To imagine that this indeed is what is best for him right now, even when he can't feel that.




Tuesday, July 25th
Daily Practices


Much to catch up on.

In the meantime I have been to one very, very different kind of workshop at Kripalu... the divine feminine weekend, and then back to another three days of teaching Mahamudra practice with Mingyur Rinpoche at the Monastery in Woodstock.

When Jimmy and I got back from Garrison we started a new daily rhythm. We wake up and sit right up in bed and meditate for 20 min. The getting up part is usually the hardest, even more so when I don't have a schedule forcing me to jump out of bed. Without school, without any regular work, the temptation to just linger and stay curled up daydreaming under the soft flannel sheets is almost irresistible. Meditating in bed tricks us both into doing it pretty soon after the alarm goes off at 7:30.

Ideally we are done and out of bed by 8:00 and on our way downstairs to then do Yoga. If we use the yoga CD we began using last year, we are busy twisting our limbs for another 45 min, even after editing and cutting some of the very slow bits out of the sound track. If we are in a hurry, we either skip one or two exercises or we do a spontaneous variation which I talk us both through... a combination of Uwe's favorite Yoga postures and our CD. That's the new part of the morning.

Next I take Jacky for her eagerly awaited morning walk, while Jimmy starts making breakfast, faithfully after over 3 years that still consists of buckwheat, or more precisely: cooked kasha over copped up celery, cucumber, tomatoes and avocado. All of it gets a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, Braggs aminos, and tahini. We love that stuff. It's from our alkaline diet. Zippy breakfast. That's what they call it in the book. Mmmm.

If we are not under too much time pressure, we read after breakfast, which really means Jimmy reads out loud to me, whatever book we are currently savoring.

And that completes the morning portion of our daily program.

At 6:00 pm we intend to stop whatever we are doing and meet in the living room for another 20 min of meditation. I say: we INTEND because we don't always manage to keep this in our schedule, but hey, those days are the exception right now. On top of that Jimmy had intended to stop work at 4:00 and put in some physical exercise, but that has not happened yet. Not once. Shows you how much work he's had.

I am really proud of us. Adding meditation and yoga in every day feels like a huge accomplishment. I have been wanting, and trying, and attempting to meditate daily for years and years, and never managed to keep it up. Now it's all of a sudden soooo easy. Thanks to Mingyur Rinpoche.

What I have learned from him about meditation has turned my world almost upside down. It seems as if what I am doing now is almost the opposite of what I was aiming for in the past. Then I thought meditation was there to give the brain more examples about living in a more right brain state of being, going for the totally expansive and source like state of mind... somehow I think I imagined that at some point your brain experience reaches a critical mass and it simply switches over for good and at that point judgements and striving and pressures are all left behind for ever and then you'd be... almost enlightened.

Now I have a new understanding of meditating. "Resting in awareness". I wont attempt to explain this in more detail here, Mingyur Rinpoches does a much better job at this than I ever can... suffice it to say that his way of teaching meditation has not only made it easy to do twice a day, but has also created the possibility to transform any other activities into meditation. So, I do a walking meditation when I walk Jacky, a driving meditation when I drive around, a watching or listening meditation when I am around other people, a thinking meditation when my brain idles without a job... whenever I think of it, I do whatever I do with awareness.

It's amazing to me how much useless stuff constantly washes through the brain with my unfocused thoughts. I am noticing the categories that return over and over again: Improving some situation or helping someone... things I could do to create success for my work... things I could have said in a better way to explain myself... or things I could say or do that would make me more seen or respected... hmmm... yes, those come back over and over again. Interesting.

I wonder if this expansion of awareness, this surrendering into the simplicity of self in action in the moment, has a similar effect as surrendering into an emotion when we do a Journey. The emotion disappears... successively all layers of emotion disappear until there is nothing but the vastness of source. I imagine that in a similar way the continued surrender into the self might cause all the layers of the self to disappear. Woooosh... gone.
Well, much slower of course. We'll see.