meditation – St GEORGIA & Boo

Next Truth

They did not feel they could choose what they wanted, independent of circumstances. … it always seems that circumstances are powerful- more powerful than you are. You feel that all you can do is react or respond to them. Even if you have developed great skill in outmaneuvering circumstances, like a lion tamer outmaneuvering the lions, it is still the circumstances- the lions- that hold the ultimate control in how you live you life. -Robert Fritz

This has been the way i have lived life, for most of my life. My first considerable circumstance that defined how i would move was my first child. In trying to choose the best life for her, I married her father and began creating the story. I wish i could say with Truth that it was out of a deep love, for him, but i can’t, it was out of a deep love for her. And i knew this at the time, even at twenty. I stayed quiet, silenced the voice within and did what needed to be done to ready myself for the making of a family. I pretended that it was all that mattered. Believing that there was enough love to make it look as though it was always going to be part of the plan. But it hadn’t been my plan, it caught me by surprise and i reacted. This story played out for seven years in all the usual ways, and for the most part i was content with all the distraction children brought. I was abundant in the circumstances surrounding the way i was moving through life and avoiding my truth. It simply was just too much to allow to rise to the surface in this story. We do that as mothers, leave ourselves behind or worse in the dark to keep the story going. And we usually think we do this well, but it’s never really far away, and life has this divine way of always bringing to you what truths you are needing to see at the time. And when my husband decided to leave one day, i remember i felt terrified and relieved in the same breath. Terrified at the idea of caring for three young children on my own and relieved that he had found the courage to leave, something i would silently be eternally grateful to him for. I’m no longer living this way, allowing the circumstances of my life to define my life. I’m moving from a different part of myself now, the one where the answer isn’t always clear right away but you know it’s there and you know that it will be revealed as its meant to, so your content in the waiting. The strength i learned about myself during this time, has carried me forward. It’s what brought me through the chapters that followed to where I’m standing now. It’s whats giving me the courage to stand strong in my truth, in the midst of this chapter. And with all resistance that comes up against it, I’m thankful to them for they are the continuum of reminders on how i need to be ever so mindful of my Truth.

beneath the one who is busy

is the one who is not busy

-buddhist teachings

domesticating children

‘washing dishes can be a meditation…

i have placed a small sticky note above our sink with these words roughly scribbled on it. since the unfortunate dying of our beloved dishwasher it is taking some great convincing in our house hold that this could be an opportunity presenting itself. Thich Nhat Hanh, a practicing zen buddhist monk, uses washing the dishes as an opportunity to practice prayer and meditation. Here, looking out the kitchen window from our simple home front, I see children learning to cooperate, the sharing in household tasks,learning life skills, growing up. It seems though that the only person i have been able to successfully persuade in this new approach to washing up is our Georgie, at 16 months she’ll happily do the rounds of dishes morning, noon and night. Thank god for my little domestic goddess.

some place, he goes

I often wonder where he goes. The moments when stillness overcomes his small body and a vacant look sets upon him deep within the souls of his eyes. He lays awake almost unmoving, yet in such a place you know in this moment, that you are not welcome to visit. You can’t go there with him, he can’t tell you where he’s been. I wonder what his thoughts are. What is this three-year old contemplating so deeply on. Or is he even contemplating at all. Maybe he is in that place, the place we have all at times in our lives so desperately wanted to escape to. The place of nothingness. Where needing and wanting simply don’t exist. There is no feeling, no emotion, no thought. Just being. Being still in a world that is full of ever moving motion. I wonder if i’ll ever know where he goes. I wonder if there will be a time when he will know, or if it will remain a mysterious part of his life, for his life. There is a part of me that hopes he’ll hold onto this special place, a hope that he won’t grow out of or forget how to get there. I’m not bothered by when or how often he disappears, I’m reassured that where ever he is going there is peace and it is offering him a calmness that can come from no other place than there. This place, is a sanctuary of rest that seems to belong to only him, it’s a blessing, a moment of clarity, it’s probably more real than anything else in this wonderful dream like state we are all living in.