Today, Jamie asks, “What do you wish to claim?” At first, I couldn’t think of anything, and then I shifted to actively resisting an answer. Something about the word made me do that old thing where I shrink from asserting myself, my desires — “oh no, it’s okay, I’m fine.” Well, forget that…
I wish to claim space, my right to take up space, to stretch and move around and breathe and make noise, to fill it, to be solid, to be here, to exist.
I wish to claim my voice, my truth, my perspective, the way I see things, what I feel, my unique experience.
I wish to claim my right to speak, to take part in the conversation, to have an opinion, to be who I am and show up exactly that, not start a question with “sorry,” not apologize but have permission, confidence, faith, to stand in and speak my truth.
I wish to claim that the way I am being asked to live by this culture is crazy, a lie, a violence I will no longer accept, that there is no sanity at this pace, that I do not have to hate myself to take part, and I am allowed to do and take what I need, to rest, go as slow as it takes to be well.
I wish to claim quiet and stillness.
I wish to claim wisdom and kindness, to assert that these qualities are the fundamental nature of every being, no matter how confused or lost.
I wish to claim that fitting in and being good, perfection, and “hustling for worthiness” are wrongheaded, symptoms of dis-ease and not a place to live.
I wish to claim the full measure of love, even knowing how much I hurt when the inevitable loss comes.
I wish to claim my body, life experienced in a body — both the responsibility and the gift.
I wish to claim the time I need to heal, to surrender to wholeness, health and sanity.
Not acting on our habitual patterns is only the first step toward not harming others or ourselves. The transformative process begins at a deeper level when we contact the rawness we’re left with whenever we refrain. As a way of working with our aggressive tendencies, Dzigar Kongtrül teaches the nonviolent practice of simmering. He says that rather than “boil in our aggression like a piece of meat cooking in a soup,” we simmer in it. We allow ourselves to wait, to sit patiently with the urge to act or speak in our usual ways and feel the full force of that urge without turning away or giving in. Neither repressing nor rejecting, we stay in the middle between the two extremes, in the middle between yes and no, right and wrong, true and false. This is the journey of developing a kindhearted and courageous tolerance for our pain.
What is yours is the way you meet the turbulence as it arrives: with grace or terror, with gratitude or anger, with openness or clenched fists, with focus or distraction. Your life will find you, no matter what you plan. Be here then. Be of this wild, brilliant new day. Respond as truly as you can, and know this life is made both of your breath, and of the wind you breathe.
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
30. Charlie the Dog Is the World’s Worst Recycler on Jezebel. An empty plastic water bottle really is one of the best puppy toys ever. Reminds me of Sam when he was a puppy, and I’d hide a ball under a tupperware bowl and he’d try to get it out. (P.S. Dexter was the best big brother).
Everybody on a massage table is beautiful. There are really no exceptions to this rule. At that first long sigh, at that first thought that “I can stop hanging on now, I’m safe” – a luminosity, a glow, begins. Within a few minutes the whole body is radiant with it. It suffuses the room: it suffuses the massage therapist too. People talk about massage therapists being caretakers, and I suppose we are: we like to look after people, and we’re easily moved to tenderness. But to let you in on a secret: I’m in it for the glow.
I’ll tell you what people look like, really: they look like flames. Or like the stars, on a clear night in the wilderness.
When you stop warring with yourself, when you end the shaming and judging and blaming, when you stop the pushing and pulling and feeding the desire to be someone else with a different life, the war with food ends as well. Maybe not all at once, but soon. It couldn’t be any other way.
“If I’m depressed, everybody’s depressed, I don’t think those feelings are that different from what everybody’s feeling. Most people just don’t tell everybody. I was just tired of telling people I was tired. It felt like every day someone would ask, ‘What’s wrong. Are you OK?’ “And I would say, ‘I’m tired, I’m tired.’ I didn’t want to do that anymore. I guess sometimes not telling the truth is just as bad as telling a lie.”
