heavy baggage under dropping eyes.
i wanna do everything but sit in silence, everything but get closer to insides.
it feels as if all of me is telling me not to. its ok, everything tells myself, you can miss just one more sit.
but it is my rebellious spirit, my forever guide (and misguide at times), that wants to disobey these posturings of support.
yesterday night I made a mistake. I make mistakes kinda often, I suppose. Been alone in my head and heart for so many years that I forget where I’m at sometimes. People know this about me, my fam especially. And it’s with this knowledge that I’m known by folks to be irresponsible, careless, forgetful, tardy to the party, spacey, clumsy, etc.
Since learning this, I really do try to be less of those things. but when I do exhibit those qualities, I judge myself with the voice of those who have judged me, and hard. Yesterday was one of those days. And as a strange (and mean) punishment, I told myself that I don’t deserve to sit because if i cannot have my mindfulness shift from meditation to my day-to-day then fuck it.
these were my stories yesterday in the thick of it.
today i sat. because i do make mistakes. the fucking end.
i hold tension- my jaw tightens, my stomach locks, my eyebrows furrow, my shoulders become friendly with my ears. and when i sit, my purpose is to notice, so i notice these parts held and i loosen my grip and release. but its because im sitting in place with the purpose of noticing that release happens. how often in my day, with all the movings, reactivities and stressors, do i notice when i hold, grip and tighten the many parts of me that want to be free?
how often can i notice it now?
the more mindfulness penetrates my practice, the more i am released from time’s grasp.
the question of “is it almost over?” will be less and less a place of focus.
when i cease holding focus with my breath, when my thoughts, stories and imaginings begin to hold me instead, physical discomfort (and essentially most internal sensations-pleasant, neutral and unpleasant) cease to be noticed as well.
how often am i held by mental activity of what had once existed, can possibly exist or will exist, instead of feeling the seemingly imperceptible and constant change that drives my body and spirit?
how often do i use distraction as a method of leaning away from discomfort? when am i able to lean towards it?
beautiful poetics in the forms of words, pictures and other imaginings move through my mind while meditating.
it’s during these moments that i notice three observations:
1. i enjoy so thoroughly getting lost in the beautiful.
2. i crave to possess all which i imagine because i fear i will lose them if i don’t.
3. these imaginings veer me from learning quiet more deeply.
to know that i have been in an illusion of thick grey
means that i am less in illusion than just a moment ago.
scattered particles of dust
reflecting coming light
i can see a little color now.
the question of discipline- how can i develop discipline so that i can develop skills, explore passions and learn more deeply- is one that i have held since the days of ditching middle school 4 days a week and trying everything for just too brief a time. this question, whenever it arose and it did so quite often, arose in fits of frustration and hate for myself; never did i hold it sweetly inside myself, never patiently letting the answers arrive in my life as life chose to present them. i held this question over myself, always beyond reach, dangling it 10 stories high, or often, just too few inches too far. i used it to show myself that i am the same old unchanging me- unruly and too wild of mind to be too good at anything.
but i must remind myself that i am living the answers, it’s just that the answers seem to go hiding in the vastness of the mutating environments of life. they are forgotten sometimes, buried in memories i no longer can remember. and i need to remember. i need to remember that these answers that go missing can always be found in the subtleties of the day-to-day, the mundane and the minute. i become answer for that minute moment on that mundane day- whether i realize it or not- it realizes itself in me. these brief and fleeting moments are incredibly important because soon, my dear one, once these brief and fleetings become abundant and piled high, i will realize that i have been answer all along.
—
free write written for radical fuckin’ sangha, a meditation space for organizers and revolutionaries, held on tuesdays at Oakland Makerspace. the prompt was on a quote by ranier maria rilke:
“have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
i find growth in darkness.
i am nourished by impermanence.
and
even in youth, i am wise.
what am i?
when we free ourselves from attachment, impermanence will no longer harm us.
in the process of being 