Monthly Archives: October 2010

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only this moment

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There’s no magic.  It often comes as a surprise to me when I meditate.  There’s no magic in the meditation that will take away what is present in this moment.  Damn.

In 1998 I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (FMS).  This was the year I was to start my second career as a psychologist in private practice.  It was also the year Frank and I had marked as the beginning of realizing our dream of working less and writing more.  We had planned carefully so that the finances would even out over the next 30 years and, having lived on one income for 15 years, we were confident that two working adults could figure out the math.  We hoped to be free for 1/3 of the week to follow our dreams and pay off the 5 digit debt from my studies.  I remember that we left for a vacation the hour after my appointment with the Rheumatologist. I don’t remember much about the vacation. There is no test that will diagnose FMS; usually physicians poke at the 18 trigger points and as you hit the roof or curl up in agony, they proclaim, “Yup, that’s positive.”  Other symptoms are unrelenting fatigue, sleep disturbances, aching joints, and a low tolerance for fools. 

Perhaps I jest about the tolerance for fools but not really.  FMS is a disease that has been (and sometimes still is) relegated to the “it’s all in your mind” which took over “it’s a woman thing” from medical ages past.  During graduate school, I recall being so fatigued and fuzzy that even I thought something was wrong.  At the appointment with my MD, I described my symptoms.  “You’re just bored,” he intoned.  “All that sitting in classes listening to boring things.”  Things have changed since those Dark Ages in the 1990’s.  We are better informed and the diagnosis is not faith-based (physicians now rarely say “I don’t believe in Fibromyalgia!”).  What has not changed is the attitude we hold to the disease.  On the day I was diagnosed, I rebelled.  This was not possib le and I was determined to prove it by working a full-time pace and doing every thing else at twice the intensity.  It didn’t take long to burn out and, humbled by my body’s power over me, I surrendered.

Looking back I can see this was a deeply challenging practice in facing my greed.  I wanted the life I didn’t have.  I wanted more of the life I had before.  I wanted the bright, sparkly things a higher salary bracket would bring me.  I wanted those cruises, trips to Europe, new cars, wardrobes and 2 hour gym sessions with a personal trainer.  I wanted to be like Oprah!  It was also a deep practice in meeting my aversion to what was present in this moment.  I didn’t want the breath-stilling fatigue, the inability to think a straight line, the aching joints.  I hated the reality of trembling muscles and legs that failed because the brain signals to move couldn’t activate them. Blindness helped to push me past my limits.  I ignored the impact on me as I tried to meet my obligations with work, family, and friends.

In reality, none of the things I thought had been taken from me would ever have been mine anyway.  Nevertheless, it felt like a real loss. I didn’t know this at the time but what was left was not the truth of my pain but who I became in its presence.  The gift of fuzzy thinking was an agonizing experience of each moment.  Only this moment was manageable. Sadly, I don’t tend to learn when the lesson is given in building blocks. As I became more and more resentful of the direction my life had taken, I took on all the wellness practices – meditation, yoga, mindfulness, vegetarianism – with a vengeance.  The magic of each ran out quickly and, once extinguished, I was left even more desperate for a fix (in all senses of the word).  “Wellness” was now an addiction.  The more I wanted “it,” the more I fell into a practice of greed.

That would become the focus of my practice for the next ten years.

Tomorrow: The work of greed in living well.

Thanks to Toni Bernhard, author of How to be Sick, for the inspiration to write this week’s posts.

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only this day

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Yesterday we held our monthly Day of Mindfulness.  This day combines the two classes we facilitate in Mindfulness-Based treatment.  We also invite the members of our sangha to come and practice with the clinic participants.  It’s held in a small hall in the Eastern Orthodox Christianity wing of a local university.  I love walking into the building early and, while Frank goes to convince the security people that we really do have the room booked, I wander the hall breathing in the incense from a closed chapel and relish in the golden hues of the iconography along the walls.

The day begins with much laughter and teasing about how we’re going to make it through; none of the participants have experience in sitting for more than the 30-45 minutes of their daily practice.  None have gone to a retreat or even been silent for more than a minute or two.  Their courage is remarkable.

We don’t reveal the details of the day until the class before the day.  They know the date and the start time.  I watch their eyes when we tell them it will be in silence.  As we reveal more and more (no eye contact, no reading, no writing, no gazing at the EXIT sign), they begin to look like they’re about to tumble down a rabbit hole.  Their trust is inspiring.

We settle in precisely at 0930 and I invite them to notice.  I talk a little about the purpose of practice and our expectations.  Whatever the theme, arc or overarching concept, it’s only ever about one thing: Notice.  And notice.  And notice again.  But we’re all new at this, even me on this day, at this time.  And I’ve been overly influenced by the radicalism of Hakuin’s rants (Wild Ivy) against “the quietistic withered-sitting methods of Unborn Zen.”  I can hear him:

Strive diligently, all of you!  Do not allow yourselves to be content with meager gains.  If you climb a mountain, go all the way to the top!  If you enter the ocean, explore its depths!

But taking them down the path to the sound of a single hand and rhinoceros fans is still beyond me.  So I offer Ken McLeod’s framework of discerning between the Effects of Meditation and the Results.

In Wake up to Your Life (check out Unfettered Mind both on website and Facebook), McLeod points out the Effect of meditation is that we notice all manner of feeling/sensations during the sitting.  Calm, agitation, joy, anxiety all arise because there is now space for them to manifest.  We tend to confuse this with the positive feelings we want from meditating.  When anxiety, sadness or something difficult arises, we assume the practice isn’t working.  So, I reassure them: this is what happens when we look down into the rabbit hole.  We notice the stream of our experience.  The Result of being open to what is present for us, McLeod writes, is steadiness as we transition from one experience to another.  And so we sit and notice for three rounds, interspersed with mindful movement exercises.  Our effort is awesome!

Lunch is in silence and then they walk outdoors for an hour with Frank playing Mummy Duck and 20-plus mindful ducklings trailing behind.  The residents in the dorm must wait for these days when they get to watch and wonder about this determined line of people, wrapped against the wind, headed for the parkland just beyond the campus, step by mindful step.  Whatever my anxieties (I watch from the hall upstairs), they never come back earlier than the allotted hour when they walk in faces scrubbed and flush with fresh air.  My faith is replenished.

They share their experiences with each other and discover that suffering is universal.  They share their surprise at their stamina and the realization of who they become when they feel rebellious, frustrated, bored, or anxious, caught in the belief that this beautiful day should have been spent some way other than in silence.

As if silence robs us all of the capacity to experience our lives.

As if attending to the sense of touch takes away the sense of sight and the vibrancy of the Autumn leaves are missed.

As if not having is the same as missing out.

As if this moment, because it will never come again, takes with it all possibilities and promises.

We notice the wanting.  And laugh.  As if!