A Lust for Certainty

Uncertainty is uncomfortable stuff.  And certainty is really not as dependable as we might think.  

Yesterday I went to work and learned that the company owners would pay me to not come there anymore.  My job was gone.  They were generous - offering severance and insurance and a no-contest with unemployment.  

I could not focus as one of my ex-bosses spoke.  The room was a foggy light of yellow.  I felt very far away. 

The day before, I had no idea this was coming.  I was settled in a 5 year crevice of working there.  I thought I had certainty with this job.  But I didn't.  Yesterday, as my bosses "ended our relationship", I was shaken to my core, grasping for something to hold on to.  There was nothing there.  They didn't want me there anymore.

Humans love certainty.  I think the need comes with the experience of birth.  The sudden mammoth pull of gravity creates a lust for solid ground.  We want something to count on.  

As I tried to make sense of what was being said to me, I was falling.  There was nothing, in that moment, to count on.  The boss I had worked with for a couple years was silent.  The other boss was speaking so crisply, it hurt my ears.  I was very, very sad.

Uncertainty was my companion.  It had it's arms around my shoulder and was whispering nasty things to me.  

Truth is, uncertainty is actually the constant.  Nothing is  guaranteed.   The only real guarantee is the Present Moment.  And I had that in full!  I had it when I was working and I had that in the yellow room as I was being fired and I have it now.  I am here.  That is alot!!

They had boxes all ready for me and I was out of there before the other employees came in.  The one boss wanted me out so much, he suggested I come back for my things.  Why did I think they needed me?

It was not a good drive back home.  I had trouble focusing. I felt like I had been body slammed.  

Finally back home, the cats were surprised to see me.  Our work schedule becomes a certainty for our pets.  They knew it was Friday, but they were delighted to have me back so soon.  They crawled out of their morning naps to greet me and tell me I'm great!  

They spent the morning sitting on me as I tried to deal with this new uncertainty.  I meditated and did some Tarot.  The cards were celebratory.  The uncertainty looked like a grand beginning.  This ending, I felt in my gut, was long overdue.

Yet, I had held onto this job for security, for CERTAINTY!

This is a financially turbulent environment.  In the last week, for instance, the stock market has been radically up and down.  We hang on to jobs because we may not get another one soon.  I did stay at that job simply because I had one.  But, maybe I kept it because I was afraid.  

I stayed in the job for certainty, for dependability, to pay the bills, to know where I was going every Monday morning.  But, I had uncertainty right there at the job and didn't even see it.  

Now it is clear and bright and bouncing around my apartment like tinkerbell.  I need to laugh.  I am free from a job I no longer enjoyed.  I am free from a boss who was difficult to work with.

But the things that kept me in that job are screaming at me - "I'm not hirable because I'm old", "no one will want me no matter how much good work I can do", "I'll never find a job better than that one".

Fear helps us to create the illusion of certainty.  We get 'stuck' because we're afraid to take the risk of uncertainty to try something different.  But the truth is, we never have certainty anyway.  

I should know that - my brother died suddenly at 23, my husband died at 37 after a 4 year battle with cancer.  My adult life has not been certain at all.   

From my readings of Buddhist writers, such as Thich Nhat Hahn, Pema Chodron and various authors on Tricycle, I am aware that my fear of uncertainty is a cause of suffering.  I am experiencing it now.  I see how I created a web that looked like certainty only to see it collapse in a second.  

The most certain state is uncertainty.  I know that, but I don't practice that awareness.  I fight it.

I am trying to create certainty, here in this field of the unknown.  I want a solid floor in my life and right now it is just not there.

I love meditating and getting to that place where nothing exists other than the fuzz I see and the noises I here.  It is a very calm place to be, like hanging on a hook in the universe.  I can do it there in meditation, but I can't seem to practice it in my everyday moments.

This is one of my dragons that is trying to teach me a new delight!  Of that, I am certain....

The Shift

Work is a shift for me.  I go from a weekend alone (with 2 cats) to an office with a roadrunner, a back stabber, a mountain goat who likes to rule the roost and various other 'characters' who are all working to become better people.

I work at a small treatment center.  We employees are all addicts in Recovery.  We were all once insane with drugs and alcohol and now we are striving to live our amends to the world.  It makes for an interesting work week. 

On the weekends, I am essentially in retreat.  I meditate, I self-Reiki.  I move energy with Macrocosmic-Orbits and EFT.  I read Tarot. I do my chores and muse about this incredible Journey in which we find ourselves.  Like riding a Great Ship through a sea of miracles.  It is grand.

Monday's I get in the office at 7:30 in the morning.  I drive 30 mins from my home in the city to a watery land where bald eagles and golden eagles live.  I see deer and groundhogs and vultures on a regular basis.  It's like going to Heaven everyday!

In the office, I put meditative music on Pandora.  The place is quiet and lovely.  I am still wearing the weekend.

When the 'roadrunner' arrives, the energy in the office swirls.  Ready, set.

It would be fun to actually see how it moves as he starts buzzing back and forth, hither and yon, in and out of the door.  We are both in Recovery, but his idea of Serenity is far different than mine.  He likes to buzz.  I like to float.

I try not to judge. Buzzing is his choice; floating is mine.  As he splashes around the room, he talks to himself, clicks his pen and makes odd buzzy sounds with his tongue.  It is irritating as hell! 

I have thoughts sometimes of a giant fly swatter.  

I occasionally wonder if he relapsed and is snorting cocaine.  He does make  sniffy sounds at times.  But I think the problem is more sinister.  I think he is a wounded boy. Many of us in recovery are adult wounded children. The back stabber is definitely a wounded child.  The mountain goat seems less wounded, but still has issues.  The funny thing is, in the past, we were all active addicts and/or drunks and, today, we are all in various stages of Recovery. 

We may be addicts, but we were probably wounded children first.  I do think addiction is primarily genetic, but one can't help see how childhood pushes us to use.  Childhood trauma seems to be a common denominator in Recovering people.  Addiction, for us, was a way to actually stay alive.  For a while. 

Eventually, using kills us.  Working in a treatment center, I see that people die of this disease.  More often than we might think.  It is a wicked, insidious disease.

I believe we have to take care of the wounded child as part of our Recovery.  If we don't, the clarity of Recovery will just be too bright and we will withdraw.  We will seek the shelter of getting high.

Drugs give us addicts a cocoon in which to crawl.  People might think using is about partying, but the truth is, using is about hiding.  Every time we get high, we're in a bubble by ourselves.  We may be with people, but we are in a bubble.  The people with whom we socialize are all in bubbles, if they are high.  It's the safest way to be with people - together but alone.

Some addicts don't like to use with others.  They are just alone and in a bubble.  Like hiding.

Adult wounded children feel quite vulnerable.  And why wouldn't they?  As children, they were deceived by someone or some occurrence.  They were traumatized or hurt or betrayed in some way that left them so freaked that they had trouble being here anymore.  Being scared half to death is a lousy way to start life. 

So at 10 or 12 or 15, we find a way out. We sneak drinks from our family or a friend has a joint or we discover how to sniff glue.  We learn how to be here and hide at the same time.  It seems like a solution. A terrific, marvelous, happy solution.

The body and spirit were made for air and water and sustenance.  Beer, marijuana and glue are none of those.  They are toxins that get into the system and start to destroy.   We users learn that eventually.  We either die or get help or try to do both.  The wounded child in us has a hard time letting go of its cocoon.  The wounded child in us no longer trusts people or us.

What we need is Care, huge dollops of it.   I learned from other recovering people how to also seek recovery from my childhood wounding.  I learned, in a rather rude awakening, that I had to deal with more than just recovery from addiction to drugs.  I also learned that the Care I needed could come to me through learning how to self-parent in a loving manner.

If we don't address our deeper issues, we will eventually relapse.  I've seen it time and time again.  It's not easy work, it can be painful and troubling; but it is always liberating.  We heal and stop longing to hide.

My trek in healing has been a long one.  The Hobbit comes to mind.  Traveling into territory I do not know, discovering dark secrets buried deep beneath my surface, finding strengths I only wished for. 

Workdays are tough sometimes.  The wounded child in me still wants to hide at times.... or lash out. 

I have learned Boundaries in Recovery.  I have also learned compassion and acceptance.  I continue to learn, with Practice, the Art of Being Here; mindfulness has a way of releasing the toxicity of a moment and finding the beauty and the humor of working with wounded people who have the Courage to be their Better Selves.

I am Grateful today.

Relief

It's finally overcast.

Most of the East Coast has been like living in an oven.  The only redemption has been water, air conditioners and hibernating. I grew up in Michigan; 108 is just odd.

I can't imagine living here without the salvation of AC.  I don't know how people lived in the South pre-cooling.  But I understand Southern literature now. Intense heat seems to produce intense literature.  

So, I've been living in a short story without all the great writing, just wandering, page to page, over the hot, paling landscapes.  I just checked out the stats and 23 of the 31 days in July were over 90, including a two week stint that soared as high as 108.  Now I understand why I have been so uncomfortable.  And hibernating.

The stats say that last summer was hotter, but it wasn't. No way!  I'm wondering, as I look out my window at the pale grey clouds, if there is a difference in cloud cover in the two summers.  Or maybe it was wind, or maybe it rained and didn't feel as hot for as long.

This summer has seemed cruel.  As if the sky itself became a desert.  Waterless, cloudless, dull, angry. Everyday, someone forgot to order moisture.  The heat kept building.  Heat upon heat, day upon day.

Baltimore is a city of brick and concrete.  By 3:00 on the afternoon of July 22, the temperature at the Inner Harbor's Science Center was 108!!  And that is by the water....

In the last couple days, we have had thunderclouds.  I've missed them, those grand buildings of moisture.  Last night, at 3 in the morning,  a violent storm beat the begeebeeze out of our neighborhood.  It was a welcome sound - all the tumult, the lightening exposing everything, the thunder clapping so loud one's bones rattle.

Today, with the massive cover of clouds protecting us from the sun's glare, I am grateful for such simple things as clouds and rain and relief.

Sailing

I saw ships in the sky last night.  Massive architecture sailing by overhead. I thought I saw someone peeking over the edge, saying Hi from the other side.  It was a sky of possibilities and hope.


A storm was brewing and the skies gathered and grumbled.  Lightening troubled the hot, difficult air.  We have had so many hot, waterless days, that this seemed foreign, this amassing of clouds.   It sounded like rain.  It growled like rain coming to slam the dry paling landscape.


I went outside to watch.  The sunset was painting the ships pink and coral and purple.  They paraded by like a fleet of Heavenly Travelers, as if we barely existed, here on the floor of their sea.  I was ant-like and awestruck.  I was looking for angels, hoping they would suddenly fly by like seagulls or dolphins.  Instead, there were starlings and grackles and robins soaring, en masse, to the Bradford pears and Maples in our yard. 


Nightly, they gather here.   Why they have chosen this yard is a question I cannot answer.  They are not particularly grand trees, but they are well kept - 3 in the back, one in the front. Why did the word get out that these were the trees to sleep in?  I've wondered about me and my landlord being healers.  I've wondered if the energy is softer here, kinder.  


I have seen them come from far away, like little specks of pepper; they fly with determination and are all wings fully out as they 'come in for their landing' in the trees.  It is 'old hat' to many of them, night after night, coming to this yard in the worn neighborhoods of Baltimore.  They load up the trees like there is enough room for all of them.


They jostle and flutter and fly out and then fly back in.  They squabble for the best branch, the safest roost, the best spot to spend the night.   They must bring all the babies and their cousins and aunts and uncles.  The noise is so loud it sounds like a bird convention.


Last night as I watched the ship clouds passing by and the birds sailing in, I listened to one of the many birds, a starling, twitter through his repertoire, like he was singing himself to sleep.  He was imitating a seagull.  It was lovely.  I thought of a starling I heard for years when I lived in Catonsville.  I called him Livingston, short for Johnathon Livingston Starling.  He would come to the boysenberry tree outside my back window and tumble through his repertoire. His seagull imitation was like a wand igniting the mundane with fairy dust!  I was transported every time he sang!  As this was my meditation window, Livingston had become part of my meditation practice. 


Listening to to this other Starling, brought more magic to my soul.   I was grateful for odd little blessings like Livingston and the mass of birds that swoop to our trees every night.  I was grateful for the 'ships' sailing by and the bent light of sunsets that temporarily transforms them. 


I still looked for the angels, then realized I was surrounded by them!

Now Mind

I realized today, as I slid out of my head into the present moment, that I had forgotten it.  I thought of my baby Grandson and his natural mindfulness.  Babies are natural Buddhas.   I was a Buddha Baby once.  Now, decades later, I'm working to get back to that mind set!!

The day my Grandbaby was born, nine months ago, I watched him be Present. Birth from the watery bowl of the womb to the weighted pull of gravity was a shock for him.  Every occurrence was HUGE for him.  His body literally writhed with the appearance of something else - a burp, a poop, a sound, a light.  It was intriguing to watch him discover life on planet Earth.

He was very focused on what was going on with his body. He was not worrying about his future. He was simply there, in the moment, being a baby.  As I looked into his new dark eyes, I wondered if he had come from somewhere else, if he had been tall once or if he once had wings  and, if he did, did he remember?  I wondered if that was a reference point to all of this new stuff.

He was uncomfortable.  That was apparent.  Physicality was heavy and active for him.  He was very keyed in to the workings of his organs, especially the newly functioning digestive system.  Being touched and held was new.  Seeing bright lights was new.  Hearing was loud and new.  Breathing was new. He was caught in a plethora of sensation.  That was all he knew - being new!!

I, on the other hand, was all up in my head.  This was my first Grandbaby.  I was awash with emotions, awe, wonder, sadness, joy.  This was a next generation - I saw all my relatives in his face - especially my husband, Joshua, who had died too young 20 years before.  I wanted Josh to see.him. Hold him. I was remembering when the nurse handed Josh his own crying newborn; how he said, "Hey Baby" and the crying baby stopped crying immediately.  Josh would be just as enamored with his Grandbaby.  It was something we needed to share, like so many things that had occurred over the years.  But this child was his first Grandbaby!

So I was not in the now, yet I was very much in the now - literally two places at once!!  Sadness and Joy, Present and Past all jumbled up in my heart and head. 

Emotions, more than anything, are what tend to throw us out of the Now experience.  Primarily because we run from the emotions. We have dubbed some emotions as unacceptable.  We fight them when they appear.  We do the Denial or Repression or Avoidance dance. 

We have categorized certain feelings, such as anger, sadness and fear, as negative.  We have decided that Serenity means being in passive peace all the time -   Is it?   Feelings of all sorts are part of our make up.  They are beautiful.  They help us function, just as blood and oxygen and muscles moving make us function.  They are part and parcel of who we are.

Without them, we would be psychopathic - then we'd really have a problem as a society!!

Watching my Grandbaby, I could see that his NOW experience included feelings.  He was uncomfortable.  Maybe even unhappy, may be even upset!!!  He was fully in those feelings.  When his mommy tried to nurse him, he was unhappy, then angry!!  The brand new baby was not happy with the physical experience.and he let us know.  He squealed like a piglet.

It was grand!

Being Present does not mean being dull or passive or unemotional or, even worse, only peaceful..... It means being here in all the happenings and feelings of the moment - without editing!!  Without self-negation or self-criticism.  It means being human in all its glorious and not-so-glorious trappings. 

We have that ability.  We used it when we were born and on into childhood where it slowly waned under the onslaught of adult opinion.  When our adult companions told us to not cry or shamed us or failed us in some way, we began the cycling of self-editing.  We refrained from being our selves, we curbed our authenticity.

Now, well-edited and bent into all kinds of forms of me, I am working to get back to that Place of Being, just being, in the moment, aware of everything, feeling my feelings, living fully and staying there. Aware, awake and very much alive!

Mundane Monday

Shifting into Serenity can be elusive on Monday mornings.  I had awoken in fear, as I do many Monday mornings.  The self-shaming voices started right up as I fed the cats and readied for work.  There was a certain hopeless despair that was following me around. 


I live in the city and work 25 miles up the Interstate in a county that is home to eagles, great blue herons and golden eagle.  I looked for all of them this morning.  The sight of them always grounds me in miracles. 


But they, too, were elusive.  I got to work, ran through the already-too-hot air and started my workday.  The computer meant Pandora and meditative music - David & Steve Gordon, Anugama, Peter Davison.  It also means,checking out my Tweets from the Daiai Lama, Marianne Williamson, and Lama Surya Das.  That's where a tweet from Lama Surya Das directed me to his blog that would serve as the eagles I didn't see this morning. 


He wrote about The Five Perfections at Beliefnet.com.  As I read, I found my Place:

This moment’s teaching, whatever you’re getting, is the perfect teaching. If it’s silence, this is the perfect teaching. If it’s birdsong or traffic noise—that’s it. If it’s a harsh lesson or confusing, this, too, is it. None other to seek or long for; utmost reality is encoded in it, right here and now. The noble Dharma, or liberating Truth, is being eloquently expressed right here and now, for those with unobstructed ears to hear and eyes of pure vision to see. The sound of the stream is the song of the divine; the wind in the trees, the breath of the Goddess. Those around us are our sangha, the congregation or holy community of bodhisattvas and seekers.

Read more: The-Five-Perfections

That was my eagle.  There it was, the vision above the mundane.  The vision that makes the mundane Sacred.  Who am I to judge the seeming mundane as unacceptable, as beneath my enjoyment or appreciation, as something to NOT want to be a part of?  Much as I was fighting it this morning, going to work is part of my Sacredness.  It is where Monday morning becomes Holy.  I-95 is my Sacred Journey to my Holy Monday.  All is part of Who I Be and Where I Am.


The problem isn't Monday morning, the problem is me and how I sit in it.  I was not 'sitting' this morning.  I was somewhere else and it resulted in fear.  I was out of Awareness and into shaky ground.  I was ready to run.  I was not here.


Everything is Sacred.  Life is Sacred.  Living is Holy.  So much happened this weekend that wants to tear at the mind and mishape it.  There was a violence in Norway that made no sense, not that violence ever makes sense, but this was formed in the mind of a mad man who looked like a neighbor.  He didn't look 'crazed', but he was.  In Baltimore, a baby is missing and the images of his hysterical young mother is heart breaking. I have a 9 month old grandbaby and her terror was mine.  A young addict whose songs win awards was found dead on Saturday.  We have watched her for years, hoping she would find the safety of Sobriety.


The Holiness of such painful occurrences is hard to see, but it is there in the emotions and the prayers that rise like little lights of Hope.  Thank Goodness we can pray!  But, I wasn't seeing it this morning.  I was caught up in my own Monday morning anguish, wishing I were somewhere else other than here.  But HERE is my Sacredness.  HERE is my NOW.  It is my Breath and my Heart and the vibrancy of all that IS. 


I am learning to not be dependent on my outward life, the life that is more Sacred than I often allow it to be.  I judge between environments - wanting my surroundings to be peaceful and kind.  Wanting my outsides to be what I struggle to make my 'insides'.  I am learning how to be here in such a way that my outsides will not determine my inside environment.  I am learning through my focus on Buddhism and Spirituality to truly appreciate EVERYTHING. 


Life is an incredible miracle.  It does not make scientific sense.  We should not be, yet we are.  I don't make my heart beat, yet it does, like clockwork.  My own special clock of life.  Miracles surround us - birds make music, butterflies are virtual living artwork and our pets love us unconditionally. 


If I stay in that, I have Peace.  If I stay AWAKE in the vision of Gratitude, I am always in Serenity.  If I stay here, I am content.


It's when I decide that certain aspects of living are unacceptable that I struggle with being here.  When I simply Be Here, I am OK.  I am more than ok, I am alive!