Mala Blog
Posted on Jun 10th, 2008
by 
Sandra
Sandra
(Inspired by the Mala writing assignment set by Leigh-Anne (QuietLaughter) in the "Writing as Spiritual Practice" board in Diving Deeper: A Writing Workshop)
I started reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert last night. I had eschewed all “God” books for months, no - years. Ever since I left my own spiritual teacher. I needed to find out what was my own. It was as if every thought and every feeling I had about life and how to be in life had been washed right out of me the 10 years I was with him, and slowly replaced with his. His were (are) so close to mine that I couldn't differentiate anymore.
There was a time when the phrase,”There is only now” meant something to me. I mean I really grokked this and it was real. And then, I wasn't so sure. Is it true? Oh God. Well yes, there is Byron Katie's voice in my head. Is it really true? Do I know absolutely that it's really true? Well, no, I don't. So now I've got her voice in my head and I don't know if it's mine either. It feels right, however. I mean her voice. And then I wonder.
I was talking about Eat, Pray, Love. Yes, the first "God" book I picked up in years. It's delightful. Something has been missing in the past months for me. I can't quite put my finger on it. It is as if I'm slightly separated from life. I feel as if I'm surrounded by a wooly cocoon.
I think this has partly to do with my all-engulfing focus on my writing. I mean my book of short stories that I have finally got enough material for. All I think of is the stories that need editing. I want to edit them, so it's not like I feel burdened by it, but there are days, like this week, where all I have is this 'wanting' and I can't get to the editing. I think it's partly because the particular story I want to edit is so huge, so personal, it feels like too much. I thought I'd try again this morning, and thought maybe twenty minutes of a Mala write might help. I think I'm cheating. I should be writing something fairly deep and meaningful. Or, I'm simply avoiding editing that story again.
The feeling I've had the past while is of being slightly deaf - energeticaly deaf - to everything but the stories. I even write blogs on things like The End of the World and I actually have no real feeling for the subject. I don't know if the end of the world is coming. I can read all that stuff about whats happening with the climate, and all the wars, and the endless spiritual writings on the big change coming, and it touches me not. Not one bit. I don't feel it. I don't not feel it. I don't not feel. I feel warm, sitting here, breathing. Quite happy to be writing something, even if it is not meaningful.
I wonder if the reason why I can't get worked up about all the problems in the world and the potential massive collapse or dimension shift is because I'm so self-absorbed. In a way I do want to be shaken out of this place I'm in. I imagine riding horses hard and fast across a hilly field. I imagine sitting in sound meditation for a week, eight hours a day. That would do it, that would squeeze out a foot or a hand or a little energetic tentacle into some other dimension than the one I'm living in now. Music helps, certain kinds of music. But the crack in my cocoon only opens for as long as the music.
And it's not as if I'm unhappy with what's happening, I'm just noticing it. I'm pretty anti-social, and yet when I spend time with people I feel more energised. My 'ears' unplugged, just a little.
There is an image in Eat, Pray, Love, right at the beginning. Elizabeth meets an Indonesian healer. She asks him how to have an ongoing experience of the divine and be 'in' the world. I'm paraphrasing, it's something like that. He gives her a drawing he made. A figure, with four legs firmly planted on the earth. For a head there are flowers. A smile is drawn over the heart. He tells her she needs to be very grounded to stay in the world, and to not see the world with her head, but with her heart.
I'm writing this down because when I read it I didn't resonate with the description. I don't want four legs on the ground. I don't think I have even one. Do I want to be grounded? I don't have a yearning for an ongoing experience with the divine – I feel no lack in this department. Seeing the world with my heart. Yes, this touches something. I know that in the past, if I have fully let in 'whats happening,' I feel a great deal of sadness for the suffering in the world. I sit here and wonder if I'm pushing this feeling aside, protecting myself. Well. Doesn't resonate. Either I'm really numb or it's not this.
I'm simply feeling what I'm feeling. Perhaps I'm protective of my creative space. Afraid that if I open a door to other experiences, I will lose it. Yes, this feels right. Well what a load of rubbish that thought is.
Access: PublicTagged with: Mala, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, spirituality, God books, Creativity, Byron Katie
byron katie
August 2008 
Sandra,
Samme taught me how to find my friends blogs. This is great. No picking an icon off my profile page and wondering if I will find anything.
Your stream of consciousness here really touched something in me. One, the feeling of having absorbed other's voices, like Byron Katie's “Is is true?”, I do that too but think it is a good exercise. I haven't had the benefit (?) of a teacher to skew things for me, just my own inspiration to go here and there.
I would love to just write, spend my time writing, is that true? Well, on some level but I don't want to give up the other things I'm doing either and I'm not getting done some of the things I feel anxious about and responsible for, even just commenting here is a procrastination on those things and so you aren't alone in that.
I've been wondering about that procrastination lately. Is it really? Or is what I'm doing perfect? Is that true?
Thank you for articulating. “I'm simply feeling what I'm feeling.” Like you, I can't get into anxiety over “the problems in the world and the potential massive collapse or dimension shift”. So much I can do nothing about personally and if I can, I do, but mostly I send love in my heart to the need and must be content with that. Whether something is going to happen in the future, well, I'll cope with whatever it is when it comes, because so many of those kinds of prophesy have been wrong.
Appreciating you this morning.
Deborah
Hi Sandra,
this is fun - here I have important things to do (writing a 'paper' on users and members and usage cycles and what to do to get many users and all that) and I stop it all to read your blog, and even comment…
Yesterday I was speaking with a friend about his atheistic conversion. Not that he's been a devout Lover of God, but still he very much believed in a metaphysical godhead… untill he had this experience.
And then we talked about the reliability of experiences as guide-posts to the truth.
An atheistic conversion, or what I call Grand Disillusionment, will squarely place you in a mystery of a world with no truly higher authority anymore - you have to figure out for yourself what is the meaning of being here now and there then, what you want to devote your life to etc.
Divine experience as guideline doesn't work anymore after such a happening, even though you might still have these wonderful extasies in your life… I do. And since there is no 'given' anymore, that also means no authorative interpretation of those experiences, you have to do the sensemaking yourself, without a higher authority to guide you.
That is a beautiful and dreadful situation: it all depends on your neediness - most of the time it feels liberating to me, but at times I'd just love to have God take me by the hand and say, “It's all good, my son, it's all good.”
In an ecology all participants have a role to play.
Seeing 'my' life as an ecology with it's own dynamics, it's own seasons, clearly allows me to 'communicate' with all beings therein: procrastination is an interesting plant, let's talk with it.
Much Love,
Mushin
Deborah, Mushin.. thanks for stopping by :-)
Well, Here I am, watering my procrastination plant! (I'm 'supposed' to be going to Google Maps and finding / printing our driving route to Ireland… )
Whether something is going to happen in the future, well, I'll cope with whatever it is when it comes,
Deborah - Yes! Now why didn't I find such an elegant way to say it?!
I was thinking how rare it is that I say something 'personal' on my blogs these days. Sweet to have you read and resonate.
Mushin. I don't think I ever had an atheistic conversion…
I never really believed anything in particular to convert from - but what you describe is pretty much how I 'act' i.e. have to figure out for yourself what is the meaning of being here now and there then, what you want to devote your life to etc.
I'm not even sure I want or look for God to take me by the hand - maybe I did once. Yes I'm sure I did, ah… how easily I forget those the dark night of the soul moments I had years ago.
Perhaps my “atheistic conversion” just happened over a long period of time so I didn't really notice it happening. These days I mostly seem to be reminding myself to take myself by the hand, if that makes any sense.
And yes I do like those 'mystical/ ecstatic' experiences, yum… like chocolate. But only really good chocolate, please ;-) Where's Tom Waits when you need him??!
Love,
Sandra
thank you, dear one
Biig hug!
55. Hugs and peace to you Sandra,
start here or go to the next one
http://jessica.gaia.com/blog/2008/4/building_community#comments
thank you,
samme
Sandra, your blog resonated powerfully for me today. It's not that I'm depressed or disaffected per se, but I often feel guilty for not feeling more emotionally connected to the people involved in the human rights stories in the news. It's not that I'm incapable of feeling empathy, either. But in my case, as a teacher and also someone in 12 step recovery for close to ten years now, I'm confronted with people on a daily basis who need my empathy and support in much more tangible, direct ways than those across the world from me. or perhaps I should say that it's more possible for me to affect the lives of those I teach and deal with in recovery than the lives of those in Darfur or the Middle East. and I suspect a similar, or at least comparable, dynamic is at work with you. You pour energy, support, empathy, insight, and feedback out here in so many ways. One of Otter's recent blogs mentioned the notion that perhaps it isn't healthy or feasible to try to think globally, really. It wears us out and drains us of energy we can be using to sustain and nourish our own health and creativity and spirituality. I'm going to try to stop being on top of everything that's happening in the news, I decided recently. It's healthier to make choices about where one's creative and nurturing energies go than it is to unconsciously dissipate them by trying to be aware and empathetic on so very many levels. Byron Katie writes, in A Thousand Names for Joy, “If you have a problem with people or with the state of the world, I invite you to put your stressful thoughts on paper and question them, and to do it for the love of truth, not in order to save the world. Turn it around: save your own world. Isn't that why you want to save the world in the first place? So that you can be happy? Well, skip the middleman, and be happy from here! You're it. You're the one. In this turnaround you remain active, but there's no fear in it, no internal war. So it ceases to be war trying to teach peace. War can't teach peace. Only peace can. I don't try to change the world–not ever. The world changes by itself, and I'm a part of that change….”
I can also identify with what you say about feeling protective of your creative space. I know that thought is rubbish but it's hard to change.
Thanks very much for your post.
Peace,
Laura
Maybe what might possibly help is to go further inside yourself, listen to the silence within, that ringing within your own ear, stay with it until you want to burst ot with what you find and share the butterfly that you are with the world. You are already, but perhaps you need to see it yourself.? Love n' hugs from Zephyr. Are you settled in now ? How do you like Ireland?
Lovely to read you both. This blog feels a bit 'old' to me, but on re-reading it the general gist remains relevant and I suspect, always did. Looking back, I suspect my feeling of lack mostly arose out of comparing myself to some others who liked to talk a lot about 'world issues' and I would feel, well, kinda blank. And then thought I was being weird and numb, but perhaps the disconnect wasn't inside me, but me simply thinking I 'should' be like others.
Laura: It's healthier to make choices about where one's creative and nurturing energies go than it is to unconsciously dissipate them by trying to be aware and empathetic on so very many levels.
Yes… and yes to what Otter wrote. Lands here as absolutely 'on'.
Zephyr, I'm not sure I sense a lack in sharing myself, I think I do that fairly fully even when I'm feeling 'numb', and I really like your suggestion of listening.. it's sounds ( ! ) much like my creative process when writing. Yes :-) I suspect I'm a butterfly who likes her cocoon but sometimes wonders if she should be 'different'.
As for Ireland.. well, I wrote a bit on Diving Deeper about it here…”The Irish Journey”
suffice to say it's taking longer than I expected, but sooon….
I know Ireland quite well, my mother lives here and I lived in Donegal as a teenager, so it's not a new place for me in terms of expectations. The area here is very very beautiful, and what is good of course is the general support that Ireland offers to writers and artists. And, it is a bit frustrating getting things 'done' - it's more like Greece or India here, as opposed to N.America / UK. Patience is needed!
Much love,
Sandra