Joy and Gratitude: Beyond a Puppy Practice

I told myself all week that this last post for May would focus on joy.  But everything over the course of the week kept getting in the way of me actually experiencing joy. So, how can I write about it if I'm not experiencing it?  How can I write about it, not only when I'm not experiencing it, but when I'm feeling an enormous amount of anger and anti-joy?  

Yet, as I was writing this morning, I knew I had to do a gratitude practice. I could feel how much I needed something to ground me in positive and uplifting energy.  But what I wrote was this:  

The whole time I wrote down what I held gratitude for, my mind kept slipping back into the things that stress me out. I kept thinking about how my heart hurts and then I feel disingenuous about the whole gratitude practice.  I sit with thoughts about how I'm lazy and scared and I struggle to get myself back to a place where I really truly feel grateful for my life--and truly feel joyous.  It just seems so false.  Like I'm trying to pretend to be happy.

I write this now with a sweet puppy in my lap and Pearl Jam's "Faithfull" playing in the background. And in these moments, I can feel real joy and gratitude. It comes at the most unexpected of times.

But joy can't be only found in puppy moments.

But what struck me earlier this morning when I was writing about the practice of gratitude was the word practice.  It was a strange moment that was both an epiphany and a feeling of 'duh'...  If I treat it like my practices of meditation and yoga, it starts to make much more sense when it doesn't always feel real. When I sit in meditation my mind frequently wanders. It can be a chore to keep myself from dwelling on a single thought in meditation. But even if I come back to my breath and body only for a moment, I know it was a valuable practice.  In fact, the more difficult the meditation, the more I realize I need to be engaged in the practice.  Until this morning, this point did not resonate at all with my work on gratitude.  What struck me is when the practice feels least genuine and most forced--that is when it is the most important for me to keep practicing. It is not phony or disingenuous; that is the work. Digging past those negative voices that distract me from the actual experience.  It takes work to feel and experience joy.  Sure, sometimes I'm lucky enough to experience it in the sweet softness of a puppy, but for a sustained experience of joy in a life of difference, disagreement, inequality, and suffering, finding joy and gratitude takes real concerted effort.  At least for me.  Do the puppy moments help? Of course they do. They can be important moments of respite, but we can't live in those puppy moments all the time.  We have to emerge in the world and feel joy when we are surrounded with rocky and treacherous terrain that can hurt. Joy has to be accessed when we know we've pissed people off or feel betrayed or have to watch people treat each other in terrible and hurtful ways. Those are the moments in which joy takes on a deeper meaning. For me, it is finding it in those moments that helps me realize how far I have come and that I can find joy within myself.  It reminds me that joy isn't simply about good things happening to me.  

Merriam-Webster defines joy as:  "the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires." What is key for me in that definition is the emotion evoked by well-being.  It is about how healthy I am feeling inside and not so much about what is happening to me from the outside.  Or rather, it is when I have the strength and resiliency to experience joy even when everything around me feels like it is going to shit.


As the song, "Faithfull," continues on in my thoughts, one particular line continues to run through my mind:

M.Y.T.H. is belief in the game controls that keeps us in a box of fear; we never listen; voice inside so drowned out; drowned you are, you are, you are everything; and everything is you; me you, you me, it's all related...  --Pearl Jam

Perhaps joy is not only hearing that drowned out voice, but moving through fear and into a place where joy is not a reaction to the world, but the internal shaping of ourselves in a world that, unfortunately, feeds on fear and negativity. A world that pushes an organic experience of joy deeper and deeper beneath the surface, making it harder and harder to access.  Perhaps that is why Merriam-Webster focuses their definition of joy, not so much on the emotion experienced by well-being, as on the stuff we possess and achieve, and other external measures of ourselves in the world. But I find that limiting and a set up for failure.  The practice of gratitude, at least for me, is a way of trying to move through those superficial experiences and find a deeper experience of joy.  Even if for only a moment. 

Dark Spaces: Finding Healing at the Start of Summer Juncture

For almost a week, I have been meditating on the darker spaces of myself.  It hasn't been particularly enjoyable, but it has been a necessary practice for me.  I have so much fear of those dark spaces. But each morning I take my meditation seat and I'm pulled into it.  The best way to describe that space is a cave.  It is a dark cave with this large growth inside of it. The growth had nearly taken over the cave and it was alive, pulsing, and rancid.  It contains everything that makes me unhappy about myself.  I am including a drawing of the closest approximation of that space and myself in meditation. My drawing is much lighter than in my experience of that space.  It is so dark that it takes time to get my bearings and understand my surroundings.  But once I was able to fine tune my sight, I spent my time in meditation touching and then scraping off the layers of soot and ick that just covered the entire.. whatever it was inside of me.  It was red and irritated and angry and hurting.  I spent so much time imagining myself cleaning what seemed like a large open infected wound, that I became obsessed with curing it and ridding myself of it.  I had the putrid stink all over me, but I kept staying focused on fixing this wound.  The ooze coming off of it was black. Some kind of viscous fluid. It was sticky and oily and didn't want to come off of my hands.  I did finally wipe them clean and started placing some sort of balm or salve on the entire wound.  

Day 1

The last several days of meditation have consisted of me placing this salve all over the wound and repeatedly.  I also kept cleaning it. I suddenly had some sort of scraping tool and kept trying to scrape off all of the shit that kept accumulating all over it.  I was obsessed with getting rid of all the stinky yucky stuff. 

It was in my meditation yesterday, though, that I realized that it wasn't about ridding myself of all of the shit. Something in that dark wound started talking to me.  It was telling me that this meditation exercise was not to encourage me to eliminate it from my unconscious.  It drew me here to learn to listen and accept this dark part of myself as a real and necessary part of me.  I realized that by scraping all that viscous fluid off, I kept opening the wound, making it more irritated and painful.  I was making it worse.  It was flaring up and I was no closer to making sense of this...whatever it is.  I could feel my shame flaring and that all I wanted to do was hide from everything. I didn't want people to see this gash. I didn't want them to see me make mistakes. I don't want to look stupid.  I don't want to be mean.  I want to be liked.  I want to be perfect.  To hell with vulnerability.  What does it get me? I could feel myself in that dark cave of my unconscious freaking out like a caged tiger.  I was not comfortable at all.  I could see how much I hide in the comfort of my victim stories (not to be confused with victories).  I stand up for things, but then I obsess and get upset and angry when my actions are not responded to the way I want.  So, then it gives me more ammunition to burrow deeper and pick at all those old wounds that haven't had time to scar within my unconscious.  I keep them awake and ready.  I don't allow myself to be okay with unfinished business, nor do I find joy in the small victories of my ability to speak my truth, to stay standing and resilient and clear that my actions were right, even if the results are not.  

Day 6

So I decided to draw another picture of myself and what I was seeing in my unconscious world after I sat in meditation this morning with this new revelation. I stopped trying to fix it and I sat with it.  I touched it.  I soothed it with my hands. It was a different sort of meditation.  I could relax in that space even if I didn't know exactly what I was touching. Even though it didn't feel very good. Even though it smelled awful.  I reminded myself that curiosity is not about curing. It's about understanding.  So, I sat with it.  I saw it as part of me.  And then something happened.  The growth didn't look as big.  It wasn't as red and irritated.  It was still dark and sooty, but it didn't feel so hot and aggravated.  I didn't feel so desperate to get out. Nor did I feel so desperate to control the healing process.

As much as I try to convince myself that I love the ugly parts of myself and that I don't want to hide those parts, I realized this week how much I am so attached to keeping that dark part of myself apart from any image I hold of myself. I also realized how alienating and exhausting it is to try to keep that part of myself in some separate hidden little corner of my unconscious.   I will continue to meditate on this space, because I know there is much learning and healing and acceptance still necessary for me.  I can see how much I hold back and how much I need to let go. If I want to tap into the deeper creative and loving parts of myself, I need to stay here and witness this part of myself. Although it is not something I long to do, I know it is the right time for me to stay in this.  This extended juncture is clearly calling me to the depths of myself and I need to actually take the time to listen.  

Neko Case

Since I feel largely uninspired and bummed out, I decided it would be best to write about something (someone) that inspires me. In this case, it is Neko Case.  I had the wonderful opportunity to see her last weekend and get lost her voice and lyrics.  I have to admit this last album struck a deep chord in me, largely because of an interview I heard her give with David Dye on NPR's World Cafe some time last fall. She discussed how this album was something more personal than she had done before and delved into her experiences with depression and challenges with her family life and upbringing--all of which I can relate to very well.  The album itself has one of the most amazing titles possible: The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You.


There is one amazing song that I return to again and again on this album, titled "Where Did I Leave that Fire." 

A chill ran through me
And I grabbed on tight
That was when I left my body for good
And I shook off all the strength I'd earned

I wanted so badly not to be me
I wanted so badly not to be me
I saw my shadow looking lost
Checking its pockets for some lost receipt

Where did I leave that fire?
Where did I leave that fire?

Will a stranger find it on a curb idling?
Cold cough and the time zone just short of outer space?
Six o'clock tomorrow a strange voice says to me
I do believe we have a fire lady
You can pick it up if you come down with ID.

-Neko Case

"I saw my shadow looking lost; checking its pockets for some lost receipt."  My love of the metaphorical and obscure has latched on to that particular line in the last week.  Although I can see those dark spaces so well these days, I just don't know what they want.  They scare me because I don't have answers and solutions. And they feel as lost as I do.  

Neko opened with this song. It has this haunting industrial sound, sort of like drops of water falling from pipes into the depths of a hardened metallic earth. It is an interesting contrast between sonic water and the lyrical fire that struggle for voice, understanding, recognition. The end haunts me most.  If I have my ID. If I can find myself somehow, then I can claim that fire--reclaim that fire. But what if I don't have ID? What if I can't figure myself out? I'm just haunted by that right now. Perhaps, because I'm feeling so lost. 

"You're not supposed to totally know what's happening. The songs are supposed to give you clues so you can fill in the blanks. I don't know if I'm good at this or not, but I try. I started out trying to write songs that were more straightforward but it didn't really work." --Neko Case, interview

This is exactly why I'm so drawn to her lyrics. I don't want lyrics that tell me exactly what has happened.  I don't want them to give me conclusions and boxed in trajectories and routes.  I want to hop on and off the lyrics and sit with them for awhile.  Hold them. Feel them.  Smell them.  Taste them. Then hop back on the route and maybe take a detour.  I want to be able to try them on and see how they fit with the moment. I don't want to keep circling around and around again and hear the song in the same way. Yet I do want the music and lyrics to inspire me to take that first step. To start to see all the possibilities out there.  

"Depression, there's no grand excellence to it. In my experience it was just almost the gulaggy boringness of it that'll kill you. You're just in this murk. And you're with other humans, but you lose all your human skills and it's just like you're in this plastic bag and you can't quite connect with people. You lose your ability to transmit electricity or something, and to receive it. It's just like this bzzzuh. It isn't sparking." --Neko Case, interview

Probably not the ideal way to end this entry, but it so deeply resonates with where I've been and where I'm afraid I'll return.  I find myself fighting to not feel this way. But in that struggle, I see how much I miss and how quickly that filmy bag can make its way over all my senses.  I don't want that. I want to find my ID and reclaim my fire. 

The Messiness of Spring

This past week has been messy.  Messy in a variety of ways, but predominantly in the area of relationships.  And the spring has managed to stir up a host of challenges for me that I have not been able to manage very well at all.  

"Clearing out the old to make room for the new is the
fundamental sadhana of the spring season." C. Twomey

I have been doing my spring cleaning in many different ways.  I cleaned my closets.  I cleaned my cabinets.  I cleaned my fridge.  I cleaned the garage.  I cleaned my yard.  I cleaned my office.  I have been doing a great job cleaning the external world around me. Those are my external spaces.  I have been making room for the new in my physical surroundings.  I can control those inanimate spaces so much better than people. 

What about internally?  I did a cleanse early on in spring.  I have been clearing internal spaces with meditation.  I have been facing some of the demons of my internal spaces.  Confronting when I need to. Telling hard truths when I need to.  

"If we are truly interested in living
consciously with the rhythms of the
seasons, we can start this
seasons by looking at what
 needs to be released
and what needs to be
fertilized." -C. Twomey

So why do I feel so...icky?  Why do I feel so incredibly heavy and lost and anxious?  I have these moments of not feeling like anything I'm doing is mattering or making a difference.  It is not helping me release anything.  


Irises grow from creeping rhizomes.  I find that fascinating.  Creeping rhizomes. The irises in my garden are starting to reveal their rhizomes, creeping rhizomes.  They are rising above the dirt.  Exposed and alive. That is how I'm feeling these days. Exposed and alive. So alive in my ability to feel, really feel.  Simultaneously, I'm exposed and scared of losing myself. Losing some part of myself. Shedding that strange layer of skin containing me, holding me. 

Irises are the first to wake up from the winter--at least in my garden. The first to test the air. Historically, they express courage. Perhaps the courage to emerge from the comfort of the earth, transforming and opening to the world above the surface. Spring is a time of change and transformation. That requires me to let go of the old and embrace the new.  And in that process, letting go of expectations. "This isn't about dropping out and becoming apathetic, but about stepping fully into one's life and not resisting the aspects that are difficult. Instead we work on transforming ourselves in them" (Twomey).  I am trying so hard not to run from the challenges of the semester's end, which so nicely and cruelly align with the challenges of spring.  Beautiful and cruel.  'Tis the season.