Tag: meditation

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Another 365-day journey around the sun

So here I am again… Another journey around the sun completed. It’s been a weird one, but then it seems that nothing can surprise anyone anymore in 2020!

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Thank you, Friends 🙂

 

I’ve been enjoying summarising my years since 2017. Then another post followed a year later,with the latest one from China.

So what’s happened since?

  • I enjoyed most of my post birthday summer last year in Shanghai – having friends there too made the whole experience beyond exceptional!
  • I started having some work done on the house – actually more than had planned for and, my oh my, it’s still on hold and it’s still driving me bonkers :-/
  • I really got back into climbing and have been making progress, especially with my leading skills
  • I completed Climbing Wall Instructor (CWI) course
  • I’ve meditated (almost) on daily basis- if not, I substituted it with some positive affirmations. Perhaps one or two might have slipped through the net? But I guess that’s my opportunity to being nice to myself and truly understand that it’s ok to have a slip up and/or to make an occasional mistake.
  • I attended Wisdom Born of Stillness weekend retreat with Ajahn Brahm at Gaia House – and Ajahn Bear was there with me, of course 🙂
  • I attended Love To Break All Boundaries: Metta Retreat with the Venerable Canda at The Barn: things aren’t always so fluffy and easy as they sound, but they’re definitely worth it!
  • I’ve started yet another Masters degree! Yeah, I know 🙂 But I’m loving it, despite an occasional tantrum 😉
  • Despite some rather rubbish past experiences, I’ve braved the weird world of online dating again… This though requires a whole new and separate post, if not a book 😉 Maybe some time soon. I have a plan. You may hear it about in not so distant future 🙂
  • …and since you’re asking, yeah, I’m enjoying it this time 🙂
  • I’ve met amazing, supportive, kind and lovely people – I just can’t imagine not feeling grateful  for who (and what) I have in my life 🙂
  • I experienced being furloughed
  • I’ve been asked to be my good friend’s bridesmaid 🙂 We even managed to go on a great hen do in Spain and be back just in time for lockdown…
  • I might be getting more ideas about what I want to do when I grow up… 😉
  • I’ve learnt some online teaching skills!
  • Life goes on…

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Ok, the thing is that not everything in the last year was all hunky-dory…And of course I experienced a lot of emotional ups and downs. But as 2020 seems to generate lots of (so called ) negative feelings and emotions, I just wanted to focus on good and meaningful events in my life. What have I learnt? Hmmm….The biggest takeway for me was to learn to set up and/or assert my boundaries much better and develop abilities not to get sucked in into somebody else’s’ dramas (especially happy with this one!). The old Polish proverb ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys’ has finally started making sense to me. I’ve learnt freakishly lots about myself in a relatively short period of time. I recognised my strengths and excepted my vulnerable self more. I love being a human being , though this often requires that vulnerability, which I’m still working on. I enjoy being ‘a work in progress‘ kind of person as for me it’s more realistic, more true and authentic than pretending that I’m (almost) perfect. I know that there’s plenty I need to work on, but for now I’ll stick to being (just the right amount of) enough.

I think here’s only one more thing to say :

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME 🙂 🙂 🙂

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On grief and surrendering…

“The area we are struggling in can often be the area we aren’t surrendering. Sometimes just admitting where we don’t know what to do and allow it to be fully felt opens up space for us to discover what we are on the other side.” /Kyle Cease/

This video by Kyle Cease arrived in my inbox few days ago.. I finally watched it on Monday morning and it made so much sense to me. I felt some raw emotions arising, but they couldn’t make their way out. I’ve watched the video several times now. And yesterday morning I woke up, sat on my bed in meditation and I felt different emotions popping up. I couldn’t name them -it’s not that I was trying mind you- but then one word stood out for me: GRIEF.

Let’s take a pause here…

Like what? Grief? Why? Apart from some of my plants, nothing/no one close to me has recently died. So how come ‘grief’ popped up in my meditation?

I don’t know, but I surrendered to it and I just cried and grieved- no judgement, no strategising what to do next and how- just me and my (suppressed) emotions coming out of me. It didn’t last long, but I started to feel more connected with my own ‘deep down’. I took some deep breaths and I felt more authentic and real than I had been recently. There was no fear at that moment. Only peace.

Later, as I was pottering around the kitchen, I started listening to  ‘Rising Strong as Spiritual Practice’ . I’m obsessed with Brene Brown and her work- probably you worked it out by now- but I’d never come across this recording till that morning. I wasn’t sure what to expect as my first thought was that it was going to be an audiobook, but I was wrong- it was a seminar with Brene Brown. Bonus! And then some 1 hour 36 minutes in, boom, she starts talking about grief! She relates it to boundaries, integrity, generosity  and forgiveness and explains that it is the only other emotion that ties closely with shame.

‘Grief is about longing, it’s about loss and it’s about feeling lost’ /Brene Brown/

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Grief is one of those emotions that we don’t want to talk about, says Brown, because we live in a culture where sadness is not acceptable. The only emotion that is accepted when grief arises is anger. We also accept fear, but we tend to put everything else away and try to hide it. Brown goes on to say that no matter how much we’ll try to hide our grief, our body will be leaning toward it as , although we may not like it, grief is needed. This is the price we pay for loving…

It really hit home. I admitted that I’d not allowed myself to grieve for a long time. And when I opened myself up for that grief, shame and guilt arrived too… My natural (?) response would be trying to find something positive to focus on, or minimise the feeling, or ‘hearing voices’ from the past who would tell me to ‘get over it’ or ‘stop being a victim’, or trying to find a solution, or bypass it and force myself to behave like I felt stronger than I actually was… It wasn’t easy, but I surrender. And I grieved. For people who aren’t in my life anymore. For feelings I don’t feel anymore. For a person I wanted to become, but I didn’t. For failed strategies. For whatever I needed to grieve. At the end I wasn’t miraculously feeling elated or happy (?), but I wasn’t feeling unhappy. I felt calm, light and connected.

Grief is a process. It will continue. But I hope that I’ll manage to just surrender to it, without embracing shame and guilt at the same time, and let it do its  healing job. And I’ll continue practising surrendering. It’s a process too, which for me can sometimes be very challenging. But I hope that that feeling of lightness, calmness and peace will be my reminder what I can experience when I surrender.

 

 

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3.44

I woke up suddenly. It was dark and chilly. Within few short moments I realised I wouldn’t fall asleep again. I looked at a clock: 3.44 am.  Great conditions for my mind to go wild, crazy and self-destructive, I thought. It happened before, too many times. But today I decided it wasn’t going to happen. I chose not to just lie in darkness and let my monkey mind do the rounds in my head as it pleased. I took action. I took my laptop, went on YouTube and typed ‘Ajahn Brahm guided meditation‘  and randomly chose this meditation – just because….My mind got used to the way I had been meditating for some time now and things weren’t working well for me anymore, so I changed  a couple of things today : my meditation posture and I let myself be guided again.  But before Ajahn, which means ‘a teacher’ in Thai,  started guiding me (and others) through the meditation process, he gave a little talk. He talked about patience and allowing time for the body and mind to slow down and stop and be still and peaceful. Ajahn said he had developed two types of patience:

1.  Waiting on the present moment’: Imagine you’re a waiter in a restaurant and you look after your guests. You’re there, observing, waiting on them not to fast, not to slowly, brining dishes in the right moment, being here when the action happens, not lingering, but being aware what’s going on right now.

Another simile of waiting on the present moment is a simile of being like a host at the party- you greet your guests as they enter your house. You asked them to come in, but you don’t have time to talk to them as another guest is coming in. So you welcome your guest, shake their hand, let go and move on to greeting your next guest. It’s like a procession: you don’t linger, you focus on one person at the time, just be with one present moment at a time. This is the right kind of patience.

So here’s what my thoughts behave- they try to come in all at once, they run and rush, and push each other and shout and jump and they all want to be inside at the same time. I can’t control how many of them will arrive, but it’s up to me to ensure how they come in, how I let them in. And it’s easier said than done. To greet, acknowledge and welcome them in my ‘house’ and be kind to them ,especially they cause some pain,  is a challenge- and a choice- but I can’t ignore them- that’s the present moment.

2.   ‘Waiting in the future : waiting for something to happen, waiting for…. [whatever]’. And that’s why when people  meditate sometimes, nothing happens. This kind of patience is the opposite to being in the present moment. This is not the right kind of patience. Don’t ex-pect, but in-spect what’s going on in the present moment.
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To meditate is to go nowhere… It’s emptiness. Vanishing. Stillness.

Have you ever thought about what ‘nowhere’ means? I surely haven’t till Ajahn enlightened me (pun intended…). It means ‘now–here‘ ! When I’m ‘nowhere’ I’m ‘now‘ – ‘here‘…Short. Sweet. Profound. Emptiness. Vanishing. Stillness. How come I’ve never noticed it?

I wasn’t following the guidance all the time, but I noticed that my mind felt calmer than the last time I tried to meditate in silence.  Ha,  just a little change, yet I felt it. It’s ok to be guided from time to time. It’s ok to be a receiver. It’s ok not to be perfect.

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Like a fine wine…

“I’m like a fine wine. I get better with age. The best is yet to come.”

                                                /Richelle Mead/

Celebrating my birthday with some Lady Grey tea and violet and blueberry cake

 

Since my last birthday:

  • I’ve continued my mindful journey and meditated daily
  • I learnt that kindness may come from the least expected directions and from people who I would’ve never thought could extend their helping hand to me, as if they were there to balance out those who I thought would’ve been there for me when I really needed them
  • I’ve learnt to be a bit more assertive ( and I’m not planning on stopping any time soon! )
  • I visited Japan
  • I became an aunt of a beautiful baby boy ( and the first American in the family!)
  • I (finally!) went to Cuba ( and surprised myself I can still communicate in my broken Spanish 🙂 ) . Oh, and for the first time ever, my gut got defeated by Cuban water (or whatever was in it!). I won’t divulge further details, it’s a rather shitty story… 😉
  • I got caught up in Ft Lauderdale crisis (yes, I’ll write about it one day)
  • I started my blog (wow, I still can’t believe it sometimes!)
  • I’ve completed Positive Psychology and Demystifying Mindfulness courses on Coursera  (and started another one with one more waiting in the pipeline)
  • My health deteriorated (but I’m working on it and I’m getting better)
  • I moved from Asia back to Europe (so not such a big change 😉 )
  • I attended a christening in Poland and wedding in the UK
  • I’ve been living with a Buddhist community again
  • I started teaching again
  • I’ve continued meeting amazing, inspiring and supportive people
  • I helped Amanda to launch her first book “Creative Unblocking: Bypass Self-Doubt, Tap Your Genius, and Complete Your Best Work“

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But most importantly I realised how resilient and strong I’ve become, having had to deal with the whole plethora of issues which had landed on me like a ton of bricks within a very short period of time in a foreign country. I’m extremely grateful for all the lessons I’ve been receiving since my last birthday- they hit me on the head, poked me, tickled me, made me cry, made me laugh, but, first and foremost, have been shaping this fine woman that I am.

Happy birthday to me – the best is yet to come 🙂