Heart Lotus Meditation

Lotus, by Marufish.

I have begun a new evening meditation in order to help me cope with the sadness I still carry with me each day.  As with most of my meditations, I kind of just made it up based on imagery and desired outcome.  I believe becoming more in touch with my heart as an entity to be protected, and more consciously working to heal it, will help yield the progress I seek.

Here is my process:

1. Fold a towel such that it is roughly the length of the area from your hips to your shoulders, and is not folded very thickly.  I fold a long beach towel into thirds from the short end, and then fold it in half lengthwise.
2. Sitting on the floor, position the towel directly behind you and lie back on it, so your spine is cushioned from the sacrum to the base of the neck.  This is a very basic, very gentle heart opening position.
3. Let your feet fall open and rest your arms about a foot from your sides, palms up, thumb and forefinger touching.
4. Become aware of your heart in your chest as you slow your breathing.
5. On an inhale, imagine your heart is a lotus flower: pink, healthy, pure, and vibrant.  Its petals are bright and soft.  For variations, I occasionally imagine I am holding my lotus-heart in my hands, admiring its beauty, or I am stroking its petals, or the air I am breathing in is causing it to open and spread itself wide.
6. On an exhale, let any sickly, withered, or black petals be borne away from your lotus-heart on your breath.  I watch them fade away into the distance.  Sometimes I whisper to myself, "Let the pain go" as my heart sheds some of its heavy darkness.
7. Repeat this process for your meditation.
8. When the timer bell rings, lie quietly, allowing your breath to return to normal, feeling and imagining the radiance in your chest.
9. When you're ready, slowly roll to your right side, cradling your head in your right arm, and pause for a moment, then come up to sit in a cross-legged position, palms together at your chest, to give thanks.

Crack

I have the music from Link's house on Outset Island in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where Granny is heartbroken, stuck in my head at the moment, which I suppose is apropos because that sad, slow dirge is very much how I am feeling right now.

I had a much rougher day of things than I'd expected.  K has been on my mind endlessly, an ephemeral ghost perched on my shoulder, intangible yet crushing me beneath his weight, hovering always over me no matter where I am and what I am doing.  The almost careless detachment is pain beyond imagining.  I am beginning to detect a very strong vibe from him that he just wants me to shut up and go away...that he is regretting being nice to me and saying that he had no intentions of "vanishing" on me.

What on Earth did I do to deserve this?  Why did this relationship, to which I gave my best and my all, end the same way as the others where I wasn't even trying?  I still don't think K has even an inkling how deeply and thoroughly he was loved and appreciated.  If he ever read even a miniscule sampling of my LiveJournal entries, his heart would probably shatter.  He told me once, not that long ago, that no one had ever loved him as I had.  I pray, for his sake, that that is not true for the rest of his life.

I went to my favorite, extremely expensive store at the mall today, and somehow managed to not buy anything.  (The lack of sale items or other items in my size helped.)  I am finally (and not a moment too soon) realizing that the purchase of material goods, no matter how wonderful, will not plug up the holes in my heart or take the pain away.  I knew this rationally, of course, but emotionally, it was a different matter.  Many a time, all it takes to stop myself from salivating over some $98 pair of pants is to tell myself, "shut up and go meditate."

And meditate I have been.  I use an app on my Android phone to both time and record my sessions, and the log indicates that the sessions have really been piling up.  I usually meditate two or more times per day now, not including any meditative segments of the yoga DVDs I use.  Yoga comes in two or more sessions also, on most days.

Something interesting I noticed the other day was that, after I had gone most of the day with neither, I felt unsettled, uneasy, unmoored.  It was like some part of me -- my body, my mind, my heart, I know not which -- was craving an anchor, either on my yoga mat or parked nearby on a pillow with my phone at my side, quietly ringing its bells to start and stop.  It seems that the two methods I have selected to try to usher me through the heartache of losing K are rapidly integrating themselves into my life such that I readily notice their occasional absence.  I am unclear on if this is a good or a bad thing, but I know, at least, that these are better things from which to be experiencing withdrawal than drugs, alcohol, random hookups, or other unhealthy habits.  Maybe these current habits will stick with me, this time.

I still haven't found the strength to perform any heart-opening poses, known to be difficult for those suffering from emotional trauma.  I hope I can soon; my chest feels tight, closed, locked down to shut even well-meaning souls like K out forever.

I wonder if he is reading this.  I wonder if he knows.

Losses

"Ted," a friend of mine since my first year of college, told me once that April is the worst month of the year, filled as it is with pain and losses.  She would know.  She is from Littleton, Colorado, and while she did not attend Columbine, she had many friends who did, and lost many of them.  As for me, I had my own experiences with April losses: my beloved cat Weezie had died April 19, 2000.  Weezie had been my constant companion for ten years; I picked her out at the town shelter only three months after my father passed away when I was six.

And now we come again to April, a month where K rapidly departed from my life, a month where LB is struggling severely with depression, a month where a grad school classmate I have befriended, "JR," is struggling with a personal tragedy of her own.  And now we have my cat, Mousie, who is in the end stages of renal failure and will be put to sleep tomorrow, by the same vet who cared for Weezie for so long.  "One woe doth tread upon another's heel, So fast they follow."

Life has been passing along.  I do not cry each day anymore.  Last night was, I believe, the first night K did not come to me in my dreams.  In my dream, a young man I have never met in real life befriended me, flirted with me, made me feel special and wanted.  By the end of the dream, I had fallen into an easy rapport with him, and felt loved and protected.  When I awoke, feeling confused and an ache in my chest of experiencing another "loss," I realized that that dream served an important role for me: it allowed me to "try on" the concept of allowing another man to care for and about me, to let someone besides K into my heart.  It showed me, in such spectacularly realistic fashion that several times today I had to remind myself that I was still single, that when the time comes, I will be able to experience with someone else the closeness and love I felt with K.  That time is a ways off yet, but it has instilled a small bit of confidence in me that I will be able to recover from this pain and move on.

The moving on thing has caused me no small amount of grief.  Similar to what I will likely experience in the days to come, when I will feel guilty for smiling, as though I am dishonoring Mousie's memory in finding some small pleasure, I feel guilt at the thought of moving on.  Moving on seems to signal that I never cared for K at all, that my love for him was fleeting or shallow, that if I do not spend the rest of my life in mourning for what I have lost, then nothing I felt for him was real.  It's a destructive mindset, to be sure.  I believe that K wants me to be happy.  I believe that Mousie wants me to be happy.  When I am ready, I want to find another young man who will love and support me, share life with me, grow with me, grow old with me.  I still want that person to be K, but if he does not want that, then I have no choice but to let him go and wish him the best happiness life can offer.  He is and always will be very dear to me, priceless beyond all accounting, and I hope to the bottom of my heart that he will know nothing but joy and good health until the end of his days.  Even after everything, I know for sure that that is what he deserves.  He is a good man, the likes of which I will never meet again.

I have been meditating and practicing yoga with a fervor not seen since before I met K.  (These practices fell by the wayside once things with him became serious.)  For weeks now, I have meditated by lying in my bed, cozy under my blankets, and placing both palms over my heart.  As I breathe in, I feel light gathering in my hands.  As I breathe out, I let the light from my hands spill through my chest, like dye being fed into a glass of water with a dropper, and let the warmth and light surround my heart, nourishing and healing it.  My heart, you see, has been a sad, gasping, dying thing, black and lying lifelessly in a pool of blood.  K tore part of it away, and that part of it will never return: there is a gaping wound there now; there are many cuts and holes besides from the other losses I have endured.  My heart has not so much clung to life as watched the life ebb away, closing its eyes, awaiting death.  But death has not come, and I do not know why.  It is my job now to nurture my heart, give it strength, show it how to keep beating even when this big piece is now gone forever, held in K's hands, maybe tucked in his pocket, maybe sitting on a shelf to collect dust.  Amputees can perhaps learn to walk again; my heart can perhaps learn to carry on.  With this breathing, I felt the heat in my chest, except this time, it was a healing heat, not a destructive pain.  Every night I have meditated this way, laboring to bring color and life back to my wounded organ.  The cold grip of sorrow still holds court, but it will not always.  No; the light will conquer the darkness.  In time, I will have the strength to send my beams of light to K, to, perhaps, help him heal, too.  I do not know what he is experiencing right now, but I have nothing to lose in sending him my caring and love, even if it is not needed anymore or never was.  He, after all, will hold a piece of my heart unto the final end.

Stillness

Okay, let's just get this out of the way now: I hate winter.  I absolutely cannot stand it.  I've lived in New York all of my life, with a brief stint in Massachusetts for college, so you'd think I would be used to it by now.  Instead, I find I dislike it more every year.  I hate the snow; it looks beautiful for about three minutes and after that is just filthy and in your way.  I hate the static, the dry skin that burns in a different spot with every movement, the chapped and bleeding lips, the itchy sweaters and constricted movement.  But most of all, I hate the cold.  I hate how it causes me to curl into myself, hunching forward, all of the muscles on my back tensed.  It's deeply uncomfortable and exhausting.  I seem to be far more sensitive to lower temperatures than the average person: when other people are comfortable, my teeth are chattering, but when other people are boiling to death, I am quite at peace.  This sensitivity seems to get more and more pronounced as I age.  I'm not sure why this is, but I remember at age 13 or so, I suited up, went outside, and crawled around the backyard for three hours pretending I was a polar bar struggling for survival on the frigid tundra.  I seem to have managed pretty well just then, but maybe that was because, back then, I didn't have "grown-up worries" like shoveling, inclement weather driving, or using personal days in order to stay home from work to be concerned about.

Against all odds, however, recently I have managed to find a redeeming value in winter: the stillness.  Oh, what a beautiful thing it is.  Everything is muffled after a snowfall.  Flora and many fauna are sleeping, tuned in to the earth's gentle cycles.

I began cottoning on to this peaceful and delightful aspect of winter a few years ago, a bit before Christmas.  I was housesitting for my mom while the rest of my family was away vacationing.  I stood at the kitchen sink, washing a few dishes, and admired the merry crowd of birds that had gathered on the other side of the driveway in the snow to feast on the just-filled contents of the four bird feeders.  It was such a joy to watch them as I worked, and I thought to myself how wonderful it would be to have a house somewhere in the woods of New England, to live alone, and walk amid the snowy trees, feeling present and alive.  And so my second novel was born.
I receive various e-mails and publications regarding yoga, meditation, or, more broadly, living an examined and mindful life.  I have noticed, in various places now, articles about the stillness of winter, and what lifestyle changes such a quiet, introspective season is guiding us towards.  I have sought to incorporate these changes into my own lifestyle.  One day, I meditated during daylight for the first time in quite a long while; I opened the blinds on my window to have a good view of the bare branches outside, and let the sun shine warmly on my face.  That was a very special meditation.  I redoubled my efforts to practice yoga more often, as my commitment to it had been flagging as of late.  It is mostly passive, restorative yoga that I practice now.  And, twice, I have utilized new mental imagery during my meditations, to bring my body and mind into balance with the season.
I sit on my pillow as usual, and then imagine a pond.  This pond has frozen over; it is surrounded by freshly fallen snow and tall, shadowed conifers, the entire scene sparkling beneath a full moon.  I think about how silent everything in this scene is, and feel to a very deep part of my being the stillness of the slumbering earth.  I imagine I am at the bottom of that pond (my gently burbling steam vaporizer helps with this), seated in the sand, feeling the minute currents that barely stir my hair.  The fish and other aquatic creatures nearby are all resting quietly along with me.  There is almost no sound to be heard; we, like a bear in her den, are all quiet in body and mind, conserving our energy, awaiting the awakening of spring.
These two mental visions -- of the pond from the surface and then of my vantage point in its depths -- are all deeply relaxing.  It becomes something I can sense and actually feel instead of something I ponder with logic.  This meditation helps me to discover, for myself, what is so special about winter.  Perhaps, with practice, I will come to tolerate or even embrace it, despite the problems it presents.

Namaste.

Mortality

It's been difficult to keep up with my meditation.  Time runs away from me and I soon find that it is very late and well past time for me to go to sleep, so I don't do it.  Or I am too angry, or depressed, to make the effort.  Or the noise level in my house is such that concentration will be impossible.

None of these are good excuses, though.  Not really.  Meditating will help me slow my mind in preparation for bed.  One of the times it is most critical for me to meditate is when I am upset.  And as for noise, there is nothing I can do about it without poisoning the atmosphere within my family, and so it will be a practice in placid acceptance of that which is beyond my control -- an important lesson, to be sure.

Last night I was, as I often am these days, feeling frustrated and angry as night approached.  It was also past my bedtime, but I resolved to meditate anyway.  I tried again a "focus" that I have used a couple of other times in the past: I concentrated on exhaling "darkness," imagining air stained black with anger and pain coming rushing out of my nostrils and then dissipating to harmless nothingness, allowing me to breathe in air that was refreshing, cleansing, and pure.  In order to properly capture the mental image, this focus requires me to exhale much more strongly than usual, which isn't in and of itself very relaxing.  However, for a number of the exhalations (but not all), I could feel the darkness binding my heart and clogging my chest lifting somewhat, dislodged by the force of my determination.

At the end of my meditation, my mood was improved a bit.  It is worthwhile, then.

Also at the end of my meditation, with head bowed and hands in prayer position at my chest as usual, I endeavored to forgive myself for my foibles.  I think I am harder on myself than anyone in the world could even dream of being, and I no longer wish to see myself that way.  I have my moments and my flaws, but I am unique, loving, and possessing a beautiful spirit.  It was to that spirit that I dedicated my practice last night, and will dedicate my practices in the days to come.

Reading of Elizabeth Edwards' death today has led me to think about that which nearly all of us assiduously ignore: our own mortality.  I wonder if I will be similarly afflicted someday; I do have a very strong history of cancer in my family, unfortunately.  Even before her passing, due to my generalized fear of losing those whom I love, I had been thinking in recent days about the degree to which my life would change if, say, I lost K.  I can only begin to imagine the devastation such an event would create.

To that end, I am grateful today for each moment I am able to spend in the company of my loved ones.  What I have today may be gone tomorrow, so it is imperative that I live with love and appreciation.

Hold on, hold on -- hold on to what you've got.
"Lean On Sheena," by The Bouncing Souls

Namaste.

Retreat

The past couple of days have been of the variety that test the project I have set out before myself, the project that is reflected by this blog.  I find that I am harboring an absolutely enormous amount of fury at most of my family members, and things with K took a turn for the worse last night, as well.  I continue to be hurt by his words and behaviors, and preventing that hurt from being translated into the anger I usually wear as a suit of armor to hide my vulnerabilities has been a tremendous challenge.  I'm still not sure I'm being terribly successful at it.  I did try, though; last night, after not speaking to him for several hours, I called to wish him good night and tell him that I loved him, even though I was still very angry and upset with him.  I decided I wanted a few days apart from him and told him this.

It hasn't been easy, at all.  My first impulse is always, always, to say something, anything.  But the more I think about the situation with him, the more I realize that I still am not at a place of tranquility regarding what's happened, and if I spoke to him now, I would likely lash out in anger and say things I would regret.  No, I think I need this time away from him to retreat into myself and think about things, and hopefully allow the knowledge of who he is and what he means to me to steep in my heart, strengthening it and enabling it to resist the hurt feelings that currently reign.

I'm going to try some gentle yoga tonight and any moment this week I have a chance, and my aim is for my meditations to bring me a measure of peace that is absent amid the chaos.  Chaos is how my brain felt last night as I attempted to meditate.  I did not fully define my intention beforehand, which did not help matters, and I was so frustrated, angry, and upset that focusing my attention even temporarily was quite difficult.  That span of six minutes, though, is what enabled me to see clearly long enough to decide to call K and tell him I loved him, even in the midst of this miniature tempest.  So it did accomplish something, disordered though it felt.

My goal for tonight's meditation is to further lift the clouds, even if only slightly, and to provide the nurturing, caring, and acceptance I crave that I currently am not receiving from other people.  I can't rely on everyone else, after all; the buck stops here.  I will need to do some thinking between now and bedtime to decide how best to achieve my aims.

It's tough to think of things like gratitude when I am so upset, but I am never without blessings, and so today I am grateful for the wisdom I have attained over the years, from myself, from others, from hard-won lessons, that have allowed me to grow and develop as a person.  For however much I sometimes handle things poorly now, ten years ago, things would have been so much worse.  Additionally, I now have the insight that I lacked in times past to observe, (usually) clear-eyed, my behaviors, their patterns, and what those patterns might mean.  Awareness of the ruts I continually fall into is the first step in my addressing and overcoming them.

Namaste.

Sharing

It was a weekend of roller coaster emotions, many tears and still more words, and a great deal of thought about my relationship with my boyfriend.  I have had four relationships prior to this one with K as well as emotional involvements with a couple of others; my dating life now spans ten years.  Each time K and I encounter a snag in this yarn we are so carefully spinning together, one part of me always sits back and silently observes my behavior and reactions to whatever situation is causing me anger, or sadness, or frustration.

None of this is easy, of course, but in light of the things I have been through in other relationships, particularly my last one, I find I am coping very well with things now.  I am proud of the great strides I've made in responding to difficulties proportionally, fighting fairly, expressing myself honestly, and, most of all, not missing the forest for the trees.  It's so easy to get caught up in those individual trees, and the overall message of the relationship -- that you love and respect each other -- is lost.

It was with that in mind that I sat down on my horse pillow last night to meditate before going to sleep.  I had a great many things from the past week and the troubles K and I had encountered along the way to which I needed to give some thought, and that did and will require some effort on my part.  But for my meditation practice last night, I returned to the fundamental truth that is always there, no matter how angry or hurt I am: I love this man.  Last night, that is all that mattered.  The sifting and sorting will come when the time is right.

I sat in a cross-legged position as usual, the backs of my hands resting on my knees, each thumb and forefinger pressed together.  I took a few breaths, then began to imagine beautiful golden light coming through my nose and settling around my heart with each inhalation.  My heart was glowing and radiant.  I then imagined K across from me and seated next to my bed as he usually is when he joins me in meditation.  Each exhalation sent a stream of light from my heart to his, bonding us as I gave of myself for this soul who means so much.  As his heart accepted the light from my own, a warm illumination surrounded him, caressing and healing and nourishing him.

For the first minute or two, these images were difficult to sustain, and my mind wandered.  But then it was suddenly easy, and my concentration levels spiked.  I could literally feel a lightness and energy in the left side of my chest: a true testimony to the power of the mind.  When the tiny bell from my phone's meditation app chimed, it actually startled me, for once, so absorbed had I been.  I breathed normally for a short time, transitioning myself back to the world, and it almost seemed like a surprise when I opened my eyes and saw that K was not, in fact, seated across from me.

I hope to try this meditation again when he is in the room with me, meditating also.  I believe that these images will be easier to conjure, and more powerful for his proximity.

Today I am grateful for the two new pairs of glasses I now have, both because I am fortunate enough to be able to afford them, and because they enable me to experience almost-perfect sight, something I have no chance of accomplishing now on my own.  For however terrible my eyes' deficiencies are (and there are many), at least mine are largely correctable.  Other people do not have this luxury.
There is much more besides for which to be grateful, of course, but I simply do not have the time to list everything!  I think it would also get repetitive.  I'll just do my best, here, and focus on what seems to be particularly relevant on any given day.

Namaste.

Thanksgiving

Yesterday was, of course, a national holiday invented for the sole purpose of feeling and/or expressing gratitude for the blessings each one of us has.  Really, I think it's about cultivating an awareness that is always with us, comforting us with the understanding of how truly lucky we are.  Unfortunately, Thanksgiving is now more about a rather stupid and pointless sport, and stuffing oneself to the point of pain.  Mindfulness is kind of a foreign concept in American culture, I'm afraid.

Nevertheless, I did my own part yesterday by thinking -- more than usual -- about the things for which I am grateful.  It helped me to overcome a bit of anger and unhappiness I was feeling about my boyfriend at the time, as we'd had something of a disagreement and had hurt each other's feelings.  I realized that, in spite of how I was feeling towards him, this was a night I did not want to spend apart.  And so he came over to my house to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family, and I am grateful that we were able to spend our first Thanksgiving together, side by side.

I was grateful for the day off of work, grateful for a good workout at the gym, grateful for the delicious homemade food in which I was able to partake, leaving me sated and nourished (but not in pain).

I made time for yoga and meditation that night.  When I meditate, I usually try to think of something before I begin that I will focus on.  Last night, I chose to focus on my personal mantra, which is from the VNV Nation song, "Perpetual," that I mentioned in my last post:

Let there always be never-ending light.

In "Perpetual," Ronan Harris sings, "Let there be, let there always be, never-ending light."  And so, my mantra takes two complete breaths:

Inhale: Focus on my breath

Exhale: "Let there be..."

Inhale: "Let there always be..."

Exhale: "Never-ending light..."

This system gives me abnormally sharp focus.  Ordinarily, even (especially) during meditation, my mind is quite heavily prone to wandering.  But the attention required to perform this particular sequence works well for me, and my mind wandered less than usual.  On my "silent" inhales, I imagined light stretching as far as the eye could see, surrounding my loved ones with warmth and strength.  It is an affirmative, comforting image for me.  There is light everywhere, all around us.  May we always feel it.

Namaste.