Open Heart Project | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

Today was rough. I mean, whose idea was it to write four hours in a row anyway? What could I possibly have to write about for four hours straight? At first, I told myself I didn’t have to at all. I have every reason not to—Dexter might be dying of cancer, and I’m teaching again this semester, and I have that sample essay for my class I should write, and I’m sad about Eric’s parents leaving, I should email my mom and my brother, and I have so much that has to get done this weekend, the garage needs cleared out and my car needs a deep cleaning and there’s laundry and the checkbook needs balanced and I really just want to stay on the couch and watch tv or read a book all day, and it’s so nice outside, and I could really use a nap, and so what if I write this book anyway, who cares.

But my meditation this morning was preceded by reading the Open Heart Project’s latest email, about Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom. As Susan Piver explained, we connect with the energy of this deity any time we attempt to understand, to connect with truth, to see reality with compassion and clarity, and that “the attempt to understand and to know, is an act of generosity toward ourself and others.” In this light, the writing of this book, the story of how one woman learned to be present, to show up with an open heart, remembered that she was fundamentally good, wise and kind and powerful, seemed more important, more than just my own exercise, about more than just me.

Then even when I start, there’s all sorts of moodling that happens, what Brenda Ueland said imagination needs, “long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.” I check on the Shambhala Mountain Center website to see how much it would cost to stay and do a weekend retreat. And of course, I have to check my Facebook, email and blog stats before I can begin. Then I try to convince myself that I should make some art before I begin, “prime the pump,” and there’s this picture of Dexter in my head, an art journal page of sorts that would be that one picture of him, the one that’s Eric’s laptop background right now, with the words “May he be well. May he be happy. He is loved. He is precious,” but instead I open my notebook and write a list.

Things that have elicited panic in me this morning:

All the work that needs done
Eric taking the dogs hiking
A mouse in the compost pile
A spot of maybe blood on the quilt covering the couch where Dexter sleeps most nights
A rattle in Dexter’s breath
Sam licking at his butt, again
The dark
Being alone
Thinking about bills and debt and balancing the checkbook
How dirty my car is, how the ABS light keeps coming on but there never seems to be time to take it in to the shop and get it checked
Not knowing what I’ll write about or if I’ll be able to write for a full four hours
The pain in my chest when I was meditating, which is probably cancer (okay, probably not, but my mind goes there)
That “something” might happen to Eric

Fear is a liar.

A little after two hours of writing that went surprisingly well, I had to take a break and eat lunch. That was about 10:30 am. You see, when you get up at 4:30 am, you get hungry for lunch at about the time most people are starting to think about breakfast. And the only reason I’m even calling it lunch, rather than “second breakfast” like a good little hobbit, is what I ate wasn’t very breakfast-like. I have been on a kick lately where I eat tons of salad and my favorite sandwich is a Gardenburger with hummus, cucumber, and spinach on round, thin multigrain bread. I’m like that, get stuck on eating the same things for at least six months at a time, without getting bored. In fact, even though I’ve eaten the same thing for lunch at least four times a week for the past four months, it was exactly what I was craving today.

I am bound by routine, happy in repetition. Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert and highly sensitive, easily overwhelmed by external stimuli, preferring quiet and calm. I don’t desire to travel, eat exotic foods, or try new things. I want to walk the same trail every morning, noticing how the seasons change the landscape, cataloging all the different colors and shapes of cloud in the same patch of sky, wearing a deep groove into the earth with my steps, knowing a place “like the back of my hand.”

After lunch, after two episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” (please don’t judge me), after picking up poop and playing fetch with the dogs but stopping after two throws because Dexter seemed to be breathing too hard, I go back to try and write for two more hours. I wonder if I should revise my plan, only write for two hours each Saturday. I mean come on, I got 2000 words written in the first two hours, and the final two will probably be crap anyway, me writing to be able to say I wrote for a full four, but I tell myself to keep writing, even if it is crap.

It feels okay, so I write about what I’ve been doing so far today, what this experience is like. One thing I’ve noticed is that it isn’t so much writing a book as learning to write a book. And yet, I am using the one strategy I’ve always applied: just start writing, keep writing and hope that something happens, pray that something will make sense.

Here’s one thing I wrote that made sense:

And yet, the week before she started this new drug, the new treatment, we were doing a forward bend in yoga, our legs straddled, stretched out as close as we could get to splits and still remain off the floor, heads down, bodies bent in half at the waist, the goal to eventually touch the floor with the top of our head, and I looked over to see her place her head and forearms on the mat, lean forward and raise her legs in the air into a full, unsupported headstand. In the moment just before, I was feeling proud that my head was closer to the floor than it had ever been, and there she was, defying gravity.

3.5 hours
3814 words
Topics written about: change, cancer, loss, death, grief, fear, basic badness, basic goodness, writing, getting another dog, identity, and authenticity.

A reader asked me the other day to share my meditation routine. When I thought about how I might describe it, I realized that it had a lot to do with an announcement I wanted to make today, was related, so I’d simply explain in this post.

What I’ve been doing lately has everything to do with just that: routine. I have finally realized that I am a person who needs, craves, hungers for routine. I don’t find it boring at all. In fact, the idea of practicing something for years is very appealing to me, sinking deeper into it, developing a foundation of wisdom through it, staying with it long enough to be able to break through my resistance, to know it so well I embody it completely. This meant I had to find a single time to meditate, the time I would practice every day, and then I’d have to stick with that, commit to it.

For so long, I resisted sitting in the morning because I already do so much that I thought I just didn’t have the time. And yet, if I waited until after a full day, I was always too tired. I already get up at 4:30 am every morning, so getting up a half hour earlier wasn’t realistic. I had to find time somewhere in my existing morning routine. I can’t give up my writing time, can’t give up walking the dogs or yoga. The only real wiggle room I had was the time I spent checking in on the computer, about half an hour. My first attempts at a morning practice meant I spent 15 minutes less on the computer and then sat for 10-20 minutes before walking the dogs or yoga. This worked for a bit, but wasn’t perfect.

Then I had the realization about how important it is for me to shower first thing in the morning. This somehow was the very shift that needed to happen for the whole structure to finally fall into place and function. Now my morning routine looks like this:

Out of bed at 4:30 am
Feed the dogs
Write morning pages while drinking 1/2 cup of coffee
Spend 10-15 minutes checking email, Facebook, and blog
Walk the dogs, or go to yoga (the dogs get walked every morning, but on my early morning yoga days, Eric takes them) or work out with my trainer
Shower
Eat breakfast
Meditate
Usually around 9 am, I either go to my paid work, or write blog posts or do other creative self-driven work

To be entirely honest, kind and gentle reader, most days after meditation, what I really want is a nap. But so far, it’s clear to me that if I want to be sure to meditate, this is where and when it needs to happen, and even if I can only do five minutes, I need to try and do it every day. That’s key: doing it every day, showing up no matter what. Trying to do it a certain way, or perfectly, or a set longer amount of time doesn’t help me to establish the routine, the tiny steps do, one small step after another.

My hope is that at some point, meditation will become like walking the dogs or yoga or writing, or drinking a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, and that a day without it would just seem too weird, too strange, too impossible. I hope that it will become as important and steady as those other practices have.

I also have a secret weapon: Susan Piver and the Open Heart Project. I signed up initially for the free, basic program, but now belong to the Practitioner level. This woman, this project and the other people involved, and the resources Susan provides saved my practice. If you feel like you need inspiration, instruction, support, direction and guidance, Susan offers that, freely. I recommend signing up if you desire to start a meditation practice, or if like me, you are finding it difficult to do on your own, or you need a restart, some inspiration or new energy for your current practice.

My big announcement: I am adding something else to my routine–every Saturday starting today I am committing to spending four hours working on my book.

I’ve been talking about this for a while, writing it for a while, but in the spring, I became very aware that if I didn’t take a more structured approach, I was never going to finish it. I can write, show up for it every day, can generate page after page, some of it’s even good, but there’s no shape to it, no plan for how to put it together. And this summer, I’d hoped to begin that process, but realized early on that what I really needed was rest and play, to take it a little easier, to relax.

As fall and a new school year approached, I started feeling the pinch, the squeeze, the pressure. I have had busy, full days all summer and couldn’t take a direct approach towards writing this book–how the heck was I going to do so once I started working full-time again?! I panicked a little, but knew I could not give up on this. So I thought about how I might find time to work more directly on it. The first thought was I’d have to blog less, but as soon as the thought arose, so did “no!!!” and the realization that I didn’t want to do less of this–I love this.

“Okay, so what else?” I thought. I could spend the weekend writing…but that wouldn’t work because I want time to rest and play, and still need to do the laundry. Then it came to me that if I simply spent four hours on Saturday, approximately half the day, and then wrote a post about that, either sharing with you something I’d written or crying about how everything I’d written was crap or that I’d stared at a blank page for four straight hours, I could make some progress, develop a habit. I show up on Saturday, and having told you this is what I’m doing, you can keep me accountable. I might try to sneak my way out of it if just I knew, but you dear reader, I don’t want to disappoint you. And I couldn’t, wouldn’t be doing this without you.

So, this is the plan. Wish me luck. I’ll let you know next Saturday how it went.