Do Me A Solid….

My book, LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT: That’s How The Light Gets In,  has been voted Best Spiritual Autobiography of the Year in Spiritual Enlightenment Magazine-December 2010 issue.

It  has a chance to be the Overall Winner if enough of you vote. It would make this writer very happy. Here is the link where you go to vote for LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT as the Best Overall Winner. And let me know if you do. If you all don’t vote, the book won’t have a chance.

www.enlightenmagazine.com/home/awards

Someone who has also suffered severe losses says that shame accompanies the losses. Because society is into deep denial about grief. It wants to us quickly achieve a new normal and shut up about our feelings. I don’t discuss loss with my friends; I save it for my writing. Here I can open my heart to what is true for me. I have loved and lost and will not ever see those dear lost ones again. Why shouldn’t I grieve them?

The holidays in our culture are ninety-nine percent commercially driven. It is not a matter of realization of what the Christ-consciousness is. For me, the Christ-consciousness was never closer to me than when I was in deep grief. The compassion of God is all-consuming. He bends down to those of us who cry to him. And often He gives us something to do. In my case, you are reading it.

In case you wonder, I also have a good life, albeit a quiet one. I devote myself to truth, to being kind to myself and simplifying my life. I say no a good deal when something isn’t right for me. A holy no that leads to a holy yes.  So don’t feel sorry for me. I do that enough myself. Then I cry and feel better and write some more. And crack wise and say outrageous things that lead me to know one thing. I am actually enough to bridge the gap between yesterday and tomorrow. I am the Self in all its glory, bending down and rising up again and again.

I know that there is a school of thought that says awakening is becoming permanently blissful. Proponents of it would have us be happy 24/7. Not.

For I have compassion and it bids me speak the truth. I will not lie about my life any longer. For me, life is the space in which awakening may or may not happen. It is the space that counts. I go to Cancer Wellness at the hospital where my late husband was treated for his cancer. At the time, it did not exist and we went to The Wellness Community, which has now merged with Gilda’s Place. Titles come and go; the space remains.

I go there because, unlike church, it espouses no doctrine; it is all inclusive. The space doesn’t care what happens in it. I walk through the doors of the building and am welcomed into a compassionate place.

My favorite activity there is Writing for Recovery. We sit around a table and write for two hours. This is as sacred as it gets. If we want to read what we have written, we do. If not, not. It is a glassed-in room that looks out on both freeway and suburbia, so there are trees and concrete in equal measure. But I am up on the seventh floor and it doesn’t matter whether tree or concrete wins. What matters is the emptiness that it fills.

Space is the place in which awakening arises, or not. It wears no labels and beckons me to enter. Once inside, I find what I am seeking. I may have to sort through boxes of old thoughts and meander among the debris of “me,” but sooner or later the space overtakes all thought.

There are other things to do in this community. There is art, meditation, cooking classes, xi gong…all juicy stuff for the beleaguered cancer patient or caregiver. I joined this community at a low point in my life; I stay because it is a high point in my life now. The cancer patients that I know come there for the same reason that I do. To experience the spaciousness of grace.

Bob may look down from a cloud occasionally and beam on me for staying close to the source. For us, our journey through cancer together ended on Dec. 20, 2004. I continue on.

Opening To The Journey

The  more I open up to writing about my inner journey, the more people I reach. What I mean is, everyone is tired of the generic stuff written about the “I am” awareness. Attention to one’s own consciousness on a continual basis is vital. How else can we catch the wolf of mechanicalness waiting to eat our pacific little sheep?

So I sit daily, looking within. Moods I may not have noticed are seen as the beginnings of a full-fledged attack of unconscious forces. The holidays bring these marauders and it happens like this. I watch something on TV and a Hallmark-type commercial comes on. Loving families are portrayed. My emotion is drawn into the scene,  but my memories are unique to me. I buried my husband two days before Christmas. I remember a tiny little tree sitting on a hospice dresser and me, his wife, staring at it with unseeing eyes. I let myself know that. And I get up and make a cup of instant coffee and eat a cookie. Silently I bless myself and thereby bless the world. “I vow to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings,” and this is one way to do it. Show mercy to yourself. You have suffered enough without adding self-blame to the mixture.

Eternal love is big enough to hold us all. But the garden variety love will fail to heal your inner hunger for wholeness. I loved my husband poorly at times on the human level and he failed me as well. He is on the other side now and I love him eternally, for ego is out of the picture. I used to get mad at him for not telling me I looked nice. Now there is no possibility of a compliment from him. There is only the Self that he is and I am finding that is a bittersweet “enough.” I have loved and been loved. I can look in a million mirrors and never see myself. Beauty is beyond the mirror; how beautiful is that?

Talking About Loss

Why do I talk so much about my losses? They were sustained over a long period of time, for one thing. My daughter lived for three years after her diagnosis and my husband for  about four and a half. That was almost eight years of caregiving a loved one with no hope of healing. All I could do was take care of business one day at a time. We had family in town, my sister and her husband, when our daughter was dying. But when Bob was diagnosed, there was only he and I and our son.

I had weeks and months that turned into years of grief work to do. I did it alone. I turned inward to spiritual teachings that consumed my interest. I lost myself in truth and I learned to breathe that way. The outer world held no attraction for me; I merely went through the motions. I was a good soldier, albeit sometimes an angry one. Oh, yes, I cursed a world that had no room for mothers of children who had died. People turned away from me carrying a bald-headed child and  once again when my arms were empty. Who wouldn’t feel betrayed?

But it is good to be betrayed by the world for then you turn within. As the Sufis say, “You are the outermost out and the innermost in.” And one day all will be well. Today, all is well, but the sufferer is unaware of that. And so compassion is built alongside the grief. And you continue on, getting through seasons of hell and seasons of melancholy and seasons of “ so what.” Life goes on, but it must go on in a renewed way.

My writing voice is what I use these days. Taking the ship a little deeper into the waters of remembrance. Healing myself as I confess and share my life with a few readers here and there. I also use humor and utter frankness to bust open the prison doors. If any of you are imprisoned, I give you, not a crust of bread, but a loaf of “Let it be.” And you shall be fed by an inner source…your own compassion.

It’s winter and I’m sitting in my cozy chair with the footstool and saying to myself: “I own this house. Bob left me in charge and it’s been six years since he died.” I look up to the four long clerestory windows that let in the sunlight. I feel sad and try to figure out why, on this particular moment, sorrow has come wafting back into me once again.

Suddenly these thoughts materialize. “Did he feel a sadness as he was leaving the house in an ambulance that would take him to hospice? Did he realize it was the last time he would be there?” I felt the sorrow shroud me. We never had a real conversation about what his death would be like. He didn’t say many of the things I wish he had. Like the lines you hear in the movies. Instead he was silent, all his strength waning, all his words lying as dormant as his body was becoming.

Grief can never be fully put into words. Because love is not about the words. It’s about the music. There is a dirge in my heart as I allow myself to remember the devastation that I felt and still feel at times. We were deeply in love and yet we put distances between us to minimize the sorrow. I know that. We each built walls to keep the other’s walls from toppling over. I know he would have liked to reach out to me more than he did. I would be living without him. Soon his clothes would no longer hang in the closet and I would quickly fill up the space they used to take. That is a woman’s dream–to have enough closet space. I kept his robe for a while and would put my face against it and it would end up wiping my tears away.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you should get over your sorrow. Yes, it waxes and wanes, but the love inside is never deleted and thrown in the trash. I am getting older without him. There will be no more back rubs on a cold winter’s night or his pills to put in the little box or a certain look on his face that said it all. “I am leaving you now; I will always love you.” And then I had a dream visitation where he said, “Your prayers are written on the wall of my heart everyday.” Amen.

So how do I move beyond grief? If I try, I will be using mental effort, which is not a power. I move beyond it by being it in the moment. I go with it, loving myself for re-experiencing the loss of someone significant in my life.  Gone forever, not coming back, not here to fix things, to comfort me. I am not cast down but lifted up by love.

Love is holding me like a jewel in the palm of its hand. It is regarding me with infinite grace, encouraging me to bloom into my full soul beauty. It has been a rough and harrowing road, but there are also moments of sublimity. When I sit and write easily of both love and death. When I know that my path is unique to me and unfolding exactly as it should. If you are grieving or fearing loss, there is not a thought in the world that will heal you. That is the lesson in grief. Thought is for practical things; for the spirit, awareness is needed.

I move around my house empty of a husband. I fit it snugly these days. It’s cedar siding is full of bird holes and I fear the arrival of the pileated woodpecker that can do damage in minutes. I would not be so aware of the house if I still had a husband to be “in charge.” That was his job; the outside of the house, the car and yard maintenance. I was the cook and shopper, the bill payer. And we lived side by side in the mystery.

We balanced each other and now I must balance myself. My masculine side is called in when boards are damaged, when the car needs air in the tires. I am learning to live more practically. But because I am alone, I am more in tune with what God would have me do. I write more because I have more time. I share myself with readers in an intimate way. I am not here to teach anyone anything. I am here because the river flows and I am going with it, not against it. What does love have to teach but letting go and entering the flow?

Winnebago Woman

I watched Winnebago Man over the weekend and realized how alike we all are. You might as well call me Winnebago Woman, for my writing often serves as a confessional for me. In case you aren’t familiar with the Winnebago Man, he did an industrial film for Winnebago back in the eighties in which he cussed like a sailor. They were filming in Iowa and it was hot and there were flies and he was in way, way over his head. Someone found the outtakes of that film and passed them around the country because they were so funny. He was @!*!! all over the place.

And so it was with me when my husband was ill. One day a neighbor stopped me in the street to ask how I was doing. I used the F word the first time in my life. It felt good. It felt totally appropriate to where I was. I had no family in town but my son, my husband was dying, everything was going to hell in a hand basket and now someone wants to know how I am @*!! doing!

As the Winnebago Man said, and I quote: “@!*!!”  All the old patriarchs can just go take a flyin’ leap into the old pond and when they go splash, I will say, again like Winnebago Man, @!*!! it!

We all have low points in our lives. And guess what, when we are down, we don’t want to hear about how happy anyone else is. Man, that really sucks. I hope you are smiling at this point; part of the path is learning how to take your lumps and make lumpy gravy. Today I sit at my iMac early in the morning writing this drivel. I am in my robe and have a heat pack on my neck. It feels so @!*!! good. Write me if you can identify and if you’re good, maybe Santa will leave some @!*!! gifts under your tree.

The Winds of Spirit

A good goal for 2011 is to let myself be blown about by the winds of spirit. To be a leaf letting myself be carried. There may be stillpoints, eddies, hurricanes or floods. The leaf will rise to the occasion if powered by the wind.

I have written about the leaf that blew into Bob’s hospice room the day he died. My sister sat by his bed and the french doors flew open twice and the last time a beautiful leaf blew in and landed by his bed. She kept it and a dear friend took a photo of it. A reminder of a beautiful life called home by the spirit.

On the personal level I tend to be overly filled with my own way to God. I think I must exert effort. But all I can do is wait on the wind of the spirit to blow me about. The words I write are seeds scattered to the four corners. The scattering is not up to me.

I am grateful for

Readers that get me.

Readers that return time and again to read my wisdom/drivel/miscellany.

Readers that are invisible and those that are visible.

Readers that see their lives mirrored in mine.

Readers that stumble and fall into the arms of the One.

Readers that wear reindeer antlers and those that don’t.

Readers that laugh and or cry as they read my words.

Readers that love holidays and those that are heaving hearty “bahs.”

Readers that find the path more interesting than anything else.

Readers that lose their way and find food more exiting than just about anything.

We are all God’s children and some of us need pacifiers…and that’s OK, too.

God bless us, everyone.

It’s Christmas. Have You Got  The Balls For It?

Living as the truth is a full-time job; that is why we only work at it part-time! To be fully realized would be to have almost no ego left; only the bare minimum needed to stay here. Oh, most of us have long since realized that we are the Self, but to live it, something total is required.  And none of us are at that point. Christ was and even He suffered from living His Truth. He wanted to take a pass at the last moment, but asked that His Father’s Will be done. In our hearts we want it, too, but the flesh is still weak. We look back at loved ones who we fancy still need us here; we limp along making compromises and half-promises. Such is the nature of the path.

Christmas brings all of our failings into the clear light of winter. Stripped of excuses, we stand bare and shivering like the trees. We know that materialism does anyone no good and yet we succumb to the daily advertising onslaught. We strive for peace on earth and gesture at drivers who pass us on the right. It’s a never-ending cycle of good and evil.

What are we to do but know this? There is a certain quality of mercy in the person who is genuinely working on him or herself. It is extended first of all to the one working and is naturally given to the world. But it doesn’t work the other way. You cannot extend mercy to a single soul if you have not shown mercy to yourself first. All inner work begins within.

I make peppermint bark and Chex mix. Go to the mall because I get bored. Have memories to deal with and the weather to contend with. Who doesn’t? Spiritual teachers and students are human beings dealing with the cycle of the seasons and their own moods.  But at the core, divinity is ever present. Witnessing the miracle of self-change, silently doing its thing, which is to be love itself. Love everlasting. I, of course, remember my daughter and husband during this time of year. The holidays are hard to bear up under. It is far easier to enter the blank slate of January, which doesn’t demand false cheer. I have loved and lost. I have gone on and learned that bending is better than breaking. But I can’t do it without participating in the ritual of the every day. So I make fudge and cookies and sit with stillness as the evening comes upon me. Writing is the gateway to grace for me. Come in and sit awhile. Rest from your activities and be with yourself. It’s past time.

December, in the past , has left me with nothing left to give. Many of you know my story. My husband, Bob, died on Dec. 20 of 2004. His birthday was Dec. 12 and our anniversary was Dec. 28. We buried him on Dec. 23 and by then I had nothing left to give. I had been wrung dry and flung on the pyre of the past. And the future was looking none too good.

Although a woman named Mary at the Marriott Courtyard produced a miraculous Christmas Eve feast for us, Christmas Day found my son and sister and I flying back to Atlanta. We had gotten the last seats on the plane, and that in itself was a miracle. I didn’t mind having Christmas dinner out of an airport snack machine. I believe it was Lance cheese crackers washed down with Coke.

We arrived back at the house sandblasted with fatigue. Bob had been in hospice only four days and for that I was grateful. But now, rest—a long winter’s nap, was looking better and better, at least to my body. My soul was sorrowing and my psyche was still pretty numb. And then the tusunami struck on the other side of the world and I recognized the tsunami within my own spirit. I had been washed clean.

Nothingness is something we want nothing to do with, although we give it lip service. I myself am a control freak and a clinger; that is why I have chosen a hard path through this life. Vernon Howard said that the easy way becomes the hard way and the hard way becomes the easy way. On meeting him, I knew the hard way was going to be my route. I knew he wanted to break us from our wrong self-reliance; every word he said indicated that. Little did I know the sorrows that would be endured when I met him many years ago.

And now here I am, clean as a whistle. I have taken many baths in which the skin was scrubbed off my ego until I screamed. Cried for mercy, begged for clemency. All for nothing. Destiny speaks and at last you listen. And at some point you begin to be thankful. Mercy may be nothing more than that.

The Elegance of Nothing

There is an elegance to nothing. The old Zen patriarchs wore it well. Of course there were no Kmarts in those days, no big box shopping or etail to distract them. Maybe we, too, would have time to watch the old frog go plop into the pond without those distractions. Who knows?

Koans were a way of passing time because they didn’t have Monopoly or video games. They weren’t plugged in, nor did they suffer from ADD. But I bet they had their own version of ennui. I can just hear one of those guys saying to his buddy, “That old frog don’t got it goin’ on….”

Maybe they didn’t have money to jingle in their patch-robe pockets, but they probably had some pretty strong drink. Maybe they had hula hoops made of barrel staves and primitive advertisements that said “Got Mu?”

But I have veered from my subject, which is the elegance of nothing. Nothing is better than something when the “something” costs you an arm and a leg and looks like the Bejesus on you.

I can’t picture a Zen master saying, “Does this patched robe make my butt look big?”

There were no mani-pedis given to old patriarchs, although they undoubtedly needed them. They walked pretty much everywhere and spent an inordinate amount of time watching trees blossom. That was just their form of Netflix. Human nature is what it is. We have over exaggerated the purity of the patriarchs. I just know that some of them must have been holy terrors—as good as Gordon Ramsey on Hell’s Kitchen. “What do you mean, you burned the rice!!”

So I shall wind this up before I am sorry I brought the subject up. I know one thing. When a mother asked her monk son where he was going and he said “Out,” she believed him and when he said he was doing nothing, she believed that, too. Something hadn’t been invented  yet.

#4093 – Friday, December 3, 2010 – Editor: Jerry Katz

WINTER DONATION DRIVE

The Winter Donation Drive is underway. With the book publication expenses, I am hoping to get some donations from loyal readers and even from new ones. The new site has to be paid for as well, so a monthly donation would be very much appreciated. I understand that these are hard times, but often we can come up with some extra change if we really want to.

Also, let me know what you want to see on the new site. I have held back from uploading audios because my recorder has been acting up and I haven’t had the time or energy to figure out what is going on with it. I am also working on how to upload some of my classic material. It’s an adventure, that’s for sure. But I am following my bliss and that’s always a good thing.

Word on the book is that it is finding its way in the world. A few readers here and there and all enthusiastic so far. It has come from a very deep place in me, so I know it strikes a chord because of that. Spread the word to folks who might resonate with it.

A LETTER FROM SWAMI AND VICKI

Dear Devotees (slackers)

I am writing this to you (meatheads) from my warm and cozy (messy) kitchen. My guru (thorn in the flesh), Swami Z, is ensconced (sprawling) in his recliner watching me work (eat cookie dough).

The holidays (sugar coma) are fast approaching and we are anxious (dreading) for the merriment (upset stomachs and headaches) to begin (end.)

What better way to spend the season (eternity in hell) than with you, our loyal (undependable) readers of this enlightening (stupid) website.

We care so much (a teaspoon’s worth) about each of you striving for enlightenment (not).

Please keep in touch (wear latex gloves) and drop us a line (use punctuation, you ninnies.)

Blessed be,

Vicki and Swami

P. S. from Swami Z–Buy the danged book already. This so-called author is about to hit the big time (take a bath) and I need for her to sell a lot of books (remain solvent so she can keep me in the swami b’ness and support me in my old age (senility) Click on her book link and make my little student happy. I hear the book is actually good (wonders never cease).

Let us know if you order it (save our butts) and we’ll send you a thank you note (when she lets me out of the kitchen long enough.) The Winter Donation Drive is on (doing poorly) and we reach into our mailbox anxiously with our fingers poking out of our ragged little mittens (send a casserole and some firewood). The Donate Button is lonely (unused.)

Yours in fervent devotion (?) Swami the Rascal Guru

Someone wise told me the more I wrote about my sorrow the faster I would heal. So the writing continues so the healing can. I reach down into my tight little psyche to see what might need to see the light. It’s dark in here. The memories are sleeping. Why should I disturb them or bring a tear to my own eye?

It is December 23, 2004, and I am sitting in the family section of the funeral home. Across the room lies the body of my husband in his casket. The minister is telling us about Bob’s life (the things I told him, for he never met the deceased.) I am thinking that I must just get through the service; it is no time for a breakdown.  Everyone is beyond exhausted. My son and sister and I have flown in from Atlanta to bury him in Memphis, Tennessee. Christmas has been disrupted by this death, as has been my life, But I am soldiering on.

Before the service, an old college friend comes up to say something to me, “Your life has been so sad,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief. I am not really there; just going through the motions. The minister’s eulogy is going on and I hear sleet beginning to hit the roof; it is zinging like a choir of ice angels.

At the graveside, we are seated and someone gives us blankets for our knees. My son sits beside me and we say to each other how beautiful the cemetery looks. The sleet has painted everything silver and poinsettias stand brilliantly against the storm. Bob is lowered into the ground. I remain outside myself and know that I have been a trooper. I have finally faced the worst day of my life. It has been hanging, like the sword of Damocles, over my head for almost five years. Now the worst has happened.

Beloved boy, whom I knew when you were in the fourth grade with me, I give you back to the earth. You loved me so deeply and so truly. The thing I can do for you is to share my passion for writing with others, as you prayed I would do. You will always be right here over my shoulder, playing the keyboard like a piano, as someone said I did. That is how I write the best, not knowing what the next chord will be.

Sometimes I write humor and sometimes I write what is on my mind. What is deep within the heart is hard to excavate, but if it can help me to heal, so be it. Don’t forget to take out the garbage and put the garage door down before you come to bed. Oh, how I would like to say those words again one more time.