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. 

The Slow Emergence of Creativity

"A tree as great as a man's embrace springs from a small shoot;
A terrace nine stories high begins with a pile of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet." 
--Lao Tzu

In these words, Lau Tzu captures the challenges of spring that have been weighing heavily upon me.  I keep thinking about seeds and bulbs.  I find myself impatiently waiting for the bulbs I planted in the fall to slowly starting making their way through the earth and into the air so I can see them.  All I see now is bare dirt.  I worry. I wonder.  I hope.  I try to control the things I cannot control.  So I keep worrying. I keep wondering. I keep hoping. 

The challenge of spring is staying the course.  It is staying focused, not on what I can't control, but on the work of nurturing all the small steps that are the foundation of creativity. I am working on the small steps of a book, reminding myself that I need to take each step if I want to get anywhere. I can't just wake up one morning with a book fully written.  It takes self-compassion, commitment, hard work, love, and trust.  Yet, my impatience grows. I get distracted. I think about the immensity of the end goal. This paralyzes me with fear and an overwhelming sense of my human limitations.  In that paralysis, I think about my bulbs. I grow impatient.  Almost to the point that I want to dig a little, just to take a peek at what is going on down there in the depths of that fertile earth.  The spring does that to me.  It wakes me up. The snow has melted. The grass is getting greener. It should be time, right? It's been a long winter and I'm ready to see some results of that hibernation.

Mu Cang Chai, Vietnam. vietnamhotels.net

The creative process tests me in all sorts of ways.  I imagine an expansive terrace and I want that to be me. I want to be that completed creation. I don't want to think about the process involved in making that terrace. I don't want to think about the years of labor.  I don't want to think of the layers of dirt.  I just want that fertile valley in all its glory. But that is not how that terrace came into being. It was a slow, organic process.  It took thousands upon thousands of small steps. It moved forward and backward, depending on all kinds of unpredictable elements--such as weather and people.  It took compassion, commitment, hard work, love, and trust.  As it states on the Inspiration Green website:  "Terraced Farms: when it rains, instead of washing away the soil, the soil stays in place. Nutrients are also held in place or carried down to the next level." It is a slow and orchestrated process.  It takes a lot of planning and a lot of trust. 

If only I could understand that completely.  If only I could be patient and intentional.  If only I could trust in the process with consistency.  Instead, I get edgy and crabby with impatience.  My anxiety grows.  I worry.  I want it now, today.  I try to hold tight to the small daily steps--and sometimes that feels amazing.  I can feel the world opening up within me.  But on other days I feel the sensation of dread and worry take over.  Where can I find solace?  Where can I find trust?  If I listen to Lao Tzu, it's in the focus and intention of each step.  It is coming to the humbling reality that creation and creative processes are anything but final and done. They are ongoing steps that do not prosper and develop in the realm of control.  Ongoing small steps can take us into amazing places. Unexpectedly beautiful places.  I need to remember that right now.   I need to sit and be patient. I need self-compassion, commitment, hard work, love, and trust. 

Stoking the Embers, Tending the Fire

Last week, Matt and I had a bonfire in his backyard as a way to celebrate the beginning of warmer weather.  I was a bit restless and found myself constantly tending the fire.  I had so many thoughts trigger as I started to look at the fire as a metaphor for my own internal fire.  The bonfire provides an opportunity to for me to meditate on the fire element within me, something that I always feel is a weaker part of my constitution.  It always feels like something that needs more of my attention.  It needs more focus.  More stoking.  

Balancing Tending to the Fire

As I tended the fire, I could see myself in those flames. I began to understand how I think about fire. I kept focused on burning away the old paper and wood that had accumulated in the fire pit over the winter.  I wanted it to be burned away and out before adding too much new wood.  But the old stuff was still a bit damp and it was tough to keep the fire blazing.  I want to keep the flames high and hot in order to burn away that old damp shit at the bottom of the pit, so I added small dry pieces to keep the flames going, pushing the old stuff into the flames. I just wanted that old stuff gone, burned away, so we could have a fresh fire pit for the summer. What I soon realized, though, was that my constant tending was not the best way to stoke the fire's sustainability. I kept futzing with with the fire and causing it to go from high flames, to nearly losing the fire altogether.  Could there be a better metaphor for my own capacity to maintain my internal fire?  I am constantly futzing and meddling, because I think that to have that fire, it has to be a blaze. My capacity to see the middle ground and acknowledge the heat that embers can produce is in its most infant stages in my mind. 

 When I took a moment to sit and watch the fire, I saw that it could live without my constant attention.  When I let myself sit and watch the fire find it's own balance, I was captivated by the way it knew, just knew how to move and shift between the dry ease of the new planks of wood and the deeper work of burning off the damp residue of accumulated winter fragments. I saw that I didn't need to move the wood around all the time to keep the flames high.  It would move through a natural progression, burning and moving in its own way.  I would get up occasionally to add some wood or stir things around so that the damper pieces could move toward the heat and take their time burning away.  It was invigorating to see the way the fire could find its own balance and that left me thinking about how my internal fire needs space. It needs room to develop and create its own heat.  

Much like my previous post, I need to make space in order to move away from the momentum produced by the easy fast burn of dry wood and to start to go deeper into the spaces that need a hotter, deeper, longer-lasting heat that only embers can produce.  Those deeper pieces that benefit from the slow burn.  Routine and movement in and through myself is key to keeping the embers stoked, but I do not need to create excessive flames and heat to experience the value of fire.  In fact, I need more embers in my life.  Less volatile flames and more sustainable and containable heat that energizes and wakes me up from the long winter.  

It's No Longer about Momentum

The past week (more like 10 days)  has been challenging.  Kapha keeps pushing and pulling me into spaces I'd rather not be.  Uncomfortable spaces.  Lonely and fearful spaces.  What is different for me this season with kapha, though, is that I have been able to stand apart and watch myself a little bit more and not get pulled down the rabbit hole so completely, totally, and fearfully. I have been able to recognize relatively quickly that it is perception that drags me into some of those sink holes. And it's fighting the seasonal shifts that can get me into a hell of a lot of trouble.  What  I mean by that is that it is that I'm realizing how important it is to work smart with my routines and activities.  It is less about getting the stick out and being aggressive and mean to those sinking urges.  It is more about focus and intention, so that the feelings that kapha promote do not take over and define me in the ways that they have in the past.


What became clear to me is that relying on the momentum of my vata energy is not a way to develop the focus and intention I need to keep kapha balanced and effective. Relying on momentum often means that when that energy is gone, I am left in a muddy puddle, unable to keep the fire moving old stagnant energy out of my body. Meditation over the past several days keeps taking me to a place where I hear myself saying, "It's no longer about momentum. It's about digging deeply and finding the real energy and fire that is bound up and trapped in your fears."


And it is fear that keeps me from going down the rabbit hole with curiosity and joy.  It is the fear that once down there, I will never get out, that immediately takes over.  Rather than being curious about the discovery and possibility of the treasures that are awaiting me, I am often overwhelmed with the fear of never escaping the rhizomatic tangles that shape the earth.  When I stop trying to fight my way out and wasting energy, I am able to observe my inner world a bit more closely. I see that there is an amazing storehouse of energy, creativity, and life just waiting for me to recognize it, embrace it, know it.  So my work as of late has been focusing on that fire in my solar plexus.  It is about nurturing that fire and staying curious about the trappings of depth and darkness. It is about opening up to the energy that is there and no longer relying on surface momentum that takes me nowhere but deeper into my fears. The abstract fears that really do not have a home aside from my mind's perceptions and stories of what I thought was supposed to be.  Now it is about finding that energy storehouse within.

Tao Teh Ching: Chapter 41
The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently.
The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and again.
The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud.
If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is.

Hence it is said:
The bright path seems dim;
Going forward seems like retreat;
The easy way seems hard;
The highest Virtue seems empty;
Great purity seems sullied;
A wealth of Virtue seems inadequate;
The strength of Virtue seems frail;
Real Virtue seems unreal;
The perfect square has no corners;
Great talents ripen late;
The highest notes are hard to hear;
The greatest form has no shape.
The Tao is hidden and without name.
The Tao alone nourishes and brings everything to fulfillment.