Unanswered, Unfinished

Hip rotations in one direction and then the other
The sacrum suspended between two sides
What will promote healing and connection?
What will strain the sacroiliac ligaments
Gluteal muscles contracting in anger, fear, sadness
Delusion, disappointment, desperation?
Will forgiveness be enough
To bridge the gap of misunderstanding 
Support spinal alignment
To walk away from the past
Give spacious birth to this moment 
Trust in the blessings and benevolence
Of a bright future?
 
Questions unanswered, the poem unfinished 
And I still practice
Through electric shocks and tears
Sounding the Lion’s Roar from within
This heart is wide open
This heart is ready for anything 
 
 
Dori Langevin invites the Kairos House Sangha to engage in gentle hip rotations during Qigong practice. My hips sway from one side to the other, allowing the sacrum suspended between two iliac bones to trace concentric circles in the horizontal plane. After fourteen years, the sacroiliac ligaments and gluteal muscles release tightly held questions and emotions.

This moment is never enough. There’s always something wrong with others, myself, the time, the place, the weather. I’m even trouble shooting a future I cannot control. But maybe it’s better than here, now, this.

I sense that the lower left back and gluteal muscles send electric shocks through the body from time to time as a wake-up call. “This is your life, your family, your work. Will you keep focusing on what’s missing, or relax into who and what is here?”

Will forgiveness be enough to bridge the gap of misunderstanding with my family, myself? Will it support spinal alignment to walk away from past patterns? Will it give spacious birth to this moment, and stop comparing it with a contracted, unconscious birth fourteen years ago? Will it trust in the blessings and benevolence of a bright future?

I’m more comfortable with leaving this post untitled, the questions unanswered, the poem unfinished than I’ve ever been before. Even through the electric shocks and tears of discomfort, I know I will never stop practicing, sounding the Lion’s Roar from within. As long as this heart is open, it is ready for anything.

 
The Heart’s Radiance

Open a window, let the air in
The shadow side to the heart 
Has been closed for too long
Bow to the cold weather 
Invite the chill in
You can still bundle up
Removing one layer at a time
When you are warm enough
And can feel the sun
 
Practicing forgiveness and gratitude through a body scan in seated meditation posture, I notice tight sensations in the midback. It’s asking me to stay a while and listen.

I’m not fond of the cold weather here in Spokane. It’s mostly cloudy with a mix of rain and sun, not warm enough to open a window and let the air in. But the midback, the shadow side of the heart has been closed for too long.

What if I metaphorically bowed to the cold weather and invited the chill in? I always have the choice to bundle up, removing one layer at a time when I am warm enough to feel the sun.
 
*****
 
It’s cold outside, but I bundle up and commit to each morning walking meditation period. I’m not going anywhere, getting anything done, which is frustrating. This isn’t even ‘real’ exercise! But I stay, noticing footsteps over soft pine needles and damp earth, the sounds of birdcall or the bell, subtle variations of cold sensations, and many thoughts with a common theme, “Why the hell am I out here when it’s so warm indoors?”.

One day while wearily pacing back and forth approximately ten to twelve feet between two ponderosa trunks like a caged animal, I pause to feel the sun peeking through the clouds and winking down at me. “I’m still here. You can’t always see or feel me, but I’m there.”

Later in the day during a brisk walk after lunch, the sun’s radiance is palpable. I remove my raincoat, gloves, and unzip a fleece. It’s easier to shed the outer layers of vulnerability when it’s warm outside, and much harder when it’s cold inside the heart.

May the heart’s furnace be fueled with helpful resources, not only for my own repletion, but for the repletion of others, all beings, this Earth.
 
 
Going Home
 
Watching the sunset from the plane back to SFO:
 
a scoop of rainbow 
sherbet ice cream 
melting over the horizon
good night sweet sun!
now a red streak
between day and night
wakefulness and dreams 
the taste of something solid 
soaked up by a sponge moon
sentinel stars keeping watch
while the sun sleeps
till it rises as honeycomb
and the sweetness begins again

​​Woke up with a pounding headache
Stayed up late last night
Come sit on the zafu
With everything as it is
Thoughts chasing the future
Replaying the past
It’s always better somewhere else
Or is it
Belly tensing against today
What do I need to do
What will the weather be like
Should have stayed asleep
For a better meditation
Waking up later
To practice again
It’s ok sweetheart
Welcome home
Just as you are
Finding the breath as ally
Soothing the body
Gathering swirling thoughts
Collecting them as mementos
For the heart to hold
Getting quiet
Sitting like a mountain
Unmoved by the weather outside
Breathing in oxygen
Breathing out carbon dioxide
Symbiosis with trees
Appreciation
Breathing in his suffering
Breathing out compassion
Breathing in her struggles
Breathing out support
Breathing in their confusion
Breathing out understanding
Breathing in the joy
Of this practice
Breathing out the wish
May others experience this too

Meditative, Qigong Healing
 
Sitting upright, supported by Earth
Warm breath of compassion
Forgiveness, wisdom
Releasing holding patterns of dis-ease
Permanence, a self in control
Clear recognition only gentleness heals


Then standing, feeling the exchange
Of energy between this body
And its surroundings
Invisibly connected to all life
The possibility of universal benevolence
Always a choice despite chaotic patterns
 
The last week and a half were challenging. From viral gastroenteritis to a cough and cold, from asthma like symptoms to worsening muscle strains, from irritation, impatience, disappointment, and exhaustion, it felt like illness was taking up permanent residence in the body. There was so much self-identification with dis-ease states and the mental formations they invoked. There was also a frantic rush to swat the emergence of each new symptom with a medication as if it were an annoying fly that would never go away. Killing it was the only choice.

​Or was it?

As I start to regain some mental clarity and physical strength, it feels important to reflect on what created more suffering, and what eased the suffering. (The word choice of suffering is very personal. If it rubs you the wrong way because you may have a heavier, incurable illness or stress that feels more significant than what I am sharing, feel free to substitute suffering with another word.) Identifying with any symptom, dis-ease or mind state was painful. Trying to overcome it with wholesome mind states like kindness, compassion, even joy was also deceptive, because I wasn’t allowing true feelings like irritation, impatience, and disappointment to throw big tantrums. I wasn’t allowing the fear to be felt, the dark cloud of doubt to be seen and known. The choice to reach for certain medications for relief was wholesome, but there was a subtle aggression against the body for misbehaving and falling apart. The belief in permanence of it all was so strong, that the urge to control the situation felt paramount.

When I chose to feel the cough and compromised breathing with gentle compassion, surrendered to supine meditation posture and gravity, released a known timeline for healing, and reached out to others for loving, healing energy, something changed. There was less identification with an invincible or dysfunctional, in control or chaotic, mindful or mindless, compassionate or critical being. Most days there was a certain percentage of each one.

We live as if everything is black and white, a dualistic mentality that does not allow for shades of gray or degrees of uncertainty. We are healthy or sick, balanced or crazy, paying attention or clueless, kind or vengeful. Is it possible most of us might just live in between the two extremes, always trying to build a reliable house on one side so as not to fall into the abyss between two cliffs of ego?

The need to know, to have things planned and figured out is strong in me. It’s a survival mechanism based on causes and conditions. Now there is recognition, compassion, forgiveness, wisdom to cushion each fall into the abyss of becoming.

The karma of now always offers two choices, suffering and the end of suffering. Robert Frost wrote that two roads diverged in a yellow wood. If you are anything like me, you might see trails in the wood well-trodden in the past from deeply ingrained patterns. There aren’t just two roads, but many paths.
​
Through meditation, Qigong, wise friends, writing, or whatever your support systems might be, may you feel connected to all life, the possibility of universal benevolence always a choice despite chaotic patterns.

​Sandbridge, Virginia Beach, United States by Jae Bano

The lipid (cholesterol) and Hbaic (3 month blood sugar average) results are released online by my primary care physician. After a few months of changing the exercise routine due to a chronic piriformis injury, and celebrating Diwali, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with so much food, I know the numbers won’t be good.

Taking a few deep breathes, I click on the lab links. The numbers confirm my apprehension. Shoulders slump, the heart sinks in disappointment.

Judgmental thoughts abound. How could you possibly think hiking and walking would be enough? Can’t you control your food choices and intake? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to offer advice to patients you can’t even follow yourself? The thoughts threaten to submerge the heart even more in the brewing anger, fear, and sadness conjured by them.

Mindfully aware of the thoughts, feelings, and effects they have on the body, I recognize an old pattern based on past causes and conditions. The lab values feel like health grades, a kind of report card defining my wellbeing. If the numbers are outside of a certain range, then I have failed.

Ouch! This hurts. It’s unpleasant. Does it have to be, or am I adding on extra arrows of suffering that don’t need to prick so sharply?

I don’t like the numbers, but like final semester grades, they don’t define what I’ve learned about physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. I wonder what a wise teacher, loved one, or good friend might say to me in this moment to help me remember kindness.

Sweetheart, this is an invitation to the biggest wellbeing party of your life! How does your body want to move, to dance? What do you want to eat at this party that is not only sweet or savory when swallowed, but will last to support deep loving connections with self and others?

Radiant, the heart emerges with more care, communicating with a curious mind to expand a narrowly focused lens on experience. With a panoramic view, I think of my colleagues and other physicians who balance the wellbeing of patients with their own wellbeing every day, sometimes to their own detriment. Ahh, others experience this, too.

Though I work part-time, have so much support at home, and cannot attribute a change in health status to work alone, I know other physicians suffer from exquisite burnout. Burdened by the overwhelming weight of patient care, demanding electronic medical records that threaten the physician-patient relationship, and never-ending administrative duties that seem to proliferate at an alarming rate, mindlessness can feel like the only easy way out.

According to Diana Winston, Director of Mindful Education at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), mindfulness is “paying attention to your present moment experience with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with what is.” For years, I worked with definitions like this in meditation, movement practices, silent retreats, and meetings with a mentor. The “paying attention to present moment experience with openness and curiosity” piece was starting to make sense. The mind got it, but the heart still wasn’t convinced.

When I learned about Kristen Neff and Chris Germer’s research and teachings on self-compassion, and began to integrate them into mindful practices, the heart began to trust the combined capacity of heart-mind to communicate with the body, to be in tune with each other and sense when there was an imbalance of thoughts, feelings, and sensations leading to dis-ease. The capacity to stay with these experiences led to internal freedom and joy independent of external circumstances.

To this day, mindful self-compassion gives me the strength to stay with difficult patients and circumstances, to touch intimacy and vulnerability without overwhelm, to celebrate healing with patients in a larger context than ones limited by disease states and problem lists.
 
Clearing
by Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.
 
May we all create a clearing in the dense forest of our lives. May mindful self-compassion bring back the meaning in medicine.

Dear Piriformis Muscles,
 
I hear the burning call of anger
The quivering fear with each step
Disappointment and impatience asking
Where do we go from here?
 
I’m sorry I mistrusted you
Left you all alone
When you needed me most
Needed someone to understand
 
I’m here for you
For as long as the healing takes
Here to hold you, support you
Grateful for your special part
 
In keeping this body whole
 
For the last month, I’ve heard the burning call of anger, the quivering fear with each step, disappointment and impatience asking, “Where do we go from here?”.

Eleven years of mindfulness and compassion practices weren’t enough. I needed help. “Help me understand what I’ve forgotten, what I need to know now!”

Who was I calling out to, and why wasn’t self-compassion working?

As the piriformis muscles continued to burn and ache with each step, I turned to supportive family, wise friends, and healers who might help me remember. This is what I discovered.

Honesty. I can’t heal what I can’t feel. I’m so used to having a plan, knowing the answer, using spiritual practice to bypass what’s asking for direct attention here and now. Why feel if I know what will heal? The problem with this logic is that I can’t possibly know what will heal, until I’m honest about the anger, fear, disappointment, and impatience present. Until I’m really willing to listen to them, let them be as they are, and show me what is standing behind them. They are not roadblocks to compassion, but doorways.

This is what I’m feeling right now. It’s OK. It’s not bad or wrong. There’s space for these feelings.
 
Compassion. Compassion is the softest thing I know that cushions the hard edges of reality. It’s what I often use to shield my heart against the extra arrows of self-judgement. It’s easier to practice compassion for someone else who is suffering, and feels selfish, self-indulgence to include myself in the circle of compassion. Over the years, self-compassion became the parent, partner, best friend I was seeking, the ally who never let me down.

 I care about this pain. Others have bodies that break down and disappoint them, too. It’s not my fault.
 
Patience. I’m still surprised by how often I use self-compassion to bargain with life. Look, I’m being gentle and kind. Why is the burning, aching sensation still here? Why do I still feel stiff like the Tin Man? Isn’t self-compassion the oil needed to lubricate this stiffness so I can move pain free? Patience asks me to wait, to let the answers come in geological time. Sometimes, I’m not sure I can wait that long, but am always surprised and humbled by the outcome when I surrender to the elements that shape each and every experience.

This won’t last forever. Everything changes. May I be patient with the impatience.
 
Gratitude. When physical, emotional pain strike, it’s like a large, dark stain on a beautiful dress, a hole in a perfect picture, the uninvited guest to a party. Help! Bring my old life back! The negativity bias deletes all memories of these piriformis muscles supporting the birth of a beautiful child almost thirteen years ago, meditation and yoga postures that have offered profound joy and peace, hikes that have brought me closer to the womb of the Divine Mother than ever before.
​
Thank you for carrying this body, for supporting each brave step as best as you can into the future unknown.
 
Trust. If old age, sickness and death are inevitable who or what can I trust? Why even try to celebrate the 10,000 joys if sorrow is just around the corner, waiting to shadow the light? I’m not sure there is a simple answer to these questions. For me, it’s a partner who wonders what I am trying to prove, recommending I take Advil and rest the body that is being pushed to continue the elliptical and yoga stretches despite obvious signals of discomfort. It’s a teenage daughter who offers glimpses of care and concern by gently patting my behind despite raging hormones and peer conditioning. It’s a mother who cooks and offers to do the dishes when she sees me wincing in pain. It’s a friend who recommends a gentle chiropractor because she knows what I want in a healer. It’s other friends who offer up compassionate listening presence like the sweetest dessert when I have forgotten how to offer it to myself. It’s a chiropractor who alleviates my fears by reminding me of the body’s intuitive capacity to heal itself. It’s Qigong helping to move stagnant energy and encourage flow. It’s wild turkeys on a hike reminding me that life still goes on, a dim sun with so much potential to burn through the fog with love, the Great Mother promising to always be there no matter how this body ages or whether I have direct access to Her.
 
The people, places in my life will come and go, but there will always be someone, something to remind me of what matters most.
 
May this reflection inspire all beings everywhere without exception. May we learn to stay with our own experience, so we can support others on their healing journey.

What she said, what she did really pissed me off. The precept, ‘knowing that our lives intertwine, I vow to speak only what it true, useful and kind‘ felt like a distant memory. Years of painful conditioning begged for release. I wanted to hurt her.

What I really wanted was for her to be conscious, for intimacy in this relationship to be built on something stronger than the ego.

*****

In The Yoga of Relationship, Phillip Moffitt describes three types of relationships: ego at the center, love and ego at the center, and love at the center. Though the model describes romantic relationships, I see how it applies to all relationships – family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, challenging folks, EVERYONE.

I immediately recognize the first type of relationship with this being. For years, the heart has diligently practiced metta for her. I know she is overwhelmed by insecurity, her actions inspired by the promise of ego belonging. It’s why we collide like asteroids so many times, instead of orbiting each other’s celestial being in awe.

May you feel a sense of belonging without the need to criticize others.

I yearn for the second type of relationship where love is also brought into the center with ego. For years, the heart has also practiced metta for this writer. I want to move beyond sense doors that trigger past hurt – sights and sounds that constrict the heart to hurt more and love less.

May I speak my truth with kindness.

“When love and ego are at the center, you are not abandoning or martyring yourself. Instead, you are giving up certain expectations, which means that your relationship to the energy of love is not dependent on your partner (or other being).”

Can I appreciate this being’s cycle of dependent origination causing her to connect mainly through comparison over compassion? Can I renounce certain expectations, so that my relationship to love is not dependent on her? Can this relationship be built on Metta (lovingkindness), Karuna (compassion), Mudita (joy), Upekkha (equanimity), where the heart is not just a welcome doormat easily stepped on, but a heavenly abode that opens to love’s possibility when feeling resourced and safe?

*****

What she said, what she did still pisses me off. The hurt is less. Wanting her to be more conscious, I turn inward, asking citta (heart-mind) for intimacy in this relationship to be built on something stronger than the ego, for the Brahmaviharas to hold us both.
​
(May the benefits of this practice be shared by all beings who struggle in relationship, all beings yearning for conscious connection.)

​It’s our first full day in Paris. I’m feeling joy after viewing Monet’s Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas at Musee d'Orsay​, marveling at how water lilies must have inspired him the way they inspire me. I’m also feeling gratitude after lighting a candle, chanting metta for all beings everywhere, and appreciating the diverse currency inside a glass box at Notre-Dame.

It’s not until we are walking to our hotel room, bellies content with Häagen-Dazs, that my husband stops abruptly.

“Hey, do you know what this charge is on our credit card?”

I open my purse and quickly realize my wallet is missing. Flower! (My substitution for the F word.) I must have left it at the Orsay gift shop after buying some post cards.

We rush to our hotel room and start to call the credit card companies. While my husband and daughter comment on the unfortunate turn of events, I’m doing my best not to add extra arrows of self-judgment.

“Breathe, Kaveri. Breathe. Let your compassionate breath flow, Sweetheart. You know how to do this.”

I check the information desk at the entrance inside Notre-Dame. The lady behind the counter shows me three black wallets, none of which are mine. I also revisit the donation box. Still, no black wallet. Feeling tired and defeated, I rejoin my family to figure out dinner plans. We decide to try a falafel place my cousin suggested. It’s about a twenty-minute walk from here.

Once we sit down with our falafel wraps, I feel like there is still something missing. I practiced self-compassion and forgiveness for the one who found the wallet. What about the others who lost their wallets? The woman at Notre-Dame showed me three other black wallets. I’m not alone. Others experienced this, too. I take the opportunity to widen the circle of compassion.

May other travelers who lose something major feel safe.
May they find solace and support.
May compassion be an antidote to self-judgment.
May they know peace.
​
I take my first bite into crispy falafel balls dressed in tangy tahini sauce, cabbage, cucumber, and eggplant tucked inside a pita bread. Yum! Dear Universe, thank you for the blessing of these experiences. I lost my driver’s license and major credit cards. I lost an identity, worldly wealth, and gained the currency of compassion.