Jersey
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In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde writes: “Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one’s own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.” I can remember the literal library I was sitting in when I first read that and first that feeling of “double-check’:can this really be possible? Are the stories I love ancestry? And then a feeling of something bright and expansive sitting with me that had not been there before. I was, then, a young thing barely hanging on in school, very much having trouble at home, and had a ways to go before getting sober, but a seed was planted. That, perhaps, I was not the sum of what I had inherited, but, rather, had the opportunity to belong to what my heart had always known was my home. I’ve had two opportunities to bring offerings to Wilde’s grave: peacock feathers, roses, prayers. There is now a guardrail around the Sphinx that guards this site. There had been a tradition of fans of his kissing his tombstone. They’d leave bright colored lipstick kisses all over it! Over time, the acid of the lipstick was beginning to erode the stone, but they’re preserved there, still. It’s quite a pilgrimage, quite a love story.
When my partner’s friend lost her grandmother, she held a Grandmother Party. Everyone was invited to bring a tradition inherited from a grandmother. I prepared cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, a favorite of Oscar Wilde’s.
Hi Colin, I really love your image and reflection of both being given a jewel and then recognizing its weight. That’s really gorgeous and it’s striking me, in context of this discussion, that part of the practices we’re talking about are daily, often very sweet ways, to honor that jewel. Even if, baseline, it just means that we’re seeing it.
Hi Virginia,
I LOVE the perspective of lineage as wild thing steward and plan to adapt that. After moving to a big city, one of the first things I connected to was its birds. I didn’t know, but NYC is a major stop on avian migration paths. I have not found it possible, yet, to literally pick up a wounded bird, but I do know who to call and try to participate in that way. I hadn’t ever connected that to a feeling of lineage and am so grateful for your perspective.I have really enjoyed reading the posts in this thread and feel grateful for the opportunity to share these reflections together and to hear the experiences of spirit, in all its many ways and forms.
I think for me, at any given moment I can come back to two experiences which ground me in a connection to something larger than myself:
I have been estranged from my family for about a decade. About eight years into that, I had a dream that my father was in the hospital. In the dream, he was frantic and a little stuck, and I sprung him out of there and took him outside, where a great swamp awaited. (We’re from New Jersey). He told me that he was afraid and I saw an egret and told him not to worry, that death would be “seeing the world from her eyes, now.” Six months after this dream, a stranger reached out to tell me that my father was in the hospital and dying. I showed up. We talked about Springsteen (again, NJ) and I told him exact things I had said in my dream. The next day I got the call that he passed. His doctor thought he might have needed me to find the peace to pass on. If we go back to Newton, that there’s rules to explain everything we can see, we can’t explain a dream communication. If we think maybe Jung is right, that there’s a meridian of synchronicity inciting communications, maybe we get closer. If we go towards eternalism, maybe all of that is true–there’s things to see and things we cannot–AND *something* guided the potentiality for peace where there had been discord.
And one more, because: I’m a sober person in a 12-step program for some time, now. Sometimes, we alcoholics can get fussy about things. Life gets better, and all of a sudden making time to get to a meeting feels different than it did when everything was on fire. But on any given day, I do a little celestial math about how many people *at any given moment* **all across the world** are sitting inside of meetings instead of driving drunk and then I quickly remember how interconnected with peace my/our sobriety is in ways we might not be able to see. And then I get my butt to a meeting 🙂
As a New Yorker, I’m always thinking about what it takes to take up my full seat on the subway. To be in space and not pushing and shoving or making myself small, just to accept my seat. The feeling in my bones that I’m sitting there as part of something wild, celestial, wonderful, & kind, creates courage to take that ride.
Hi Melanie, wow, reading this was so inspiring. I appreciate the different teachers you had in your life early on and your courage and curiosity to find your own path. The spiritual adventure of getting to know that “through-thread” (love that) is not one I knew I’d be invited on! But discovering that that doorway was open for me to walk through, and expansive and kind enough to ask questions and bring all of my self and experiences with, has become the aspect of my life I feel most joyous with and in. It’s a great place to be when you can both have a seat in the room and have questions-in-progress while you’re there.
Hi Anita,
I love your discovery of eternalism and perfectionism, as if by believing in it you might have been reenvoking a history or style of believing in it that had grown to be more expansive in your life than it was when it was first instructed. I also love the way you frame that each system of beliefs is connected by a through-river, in some way. I feel that, too. That any desire for meaning (or its absence) has us orbiting something very similar.Hey Erin,
I really appreciate the skillful way you’ve surface this paradox: consistency creating more freedom is something that takes time to learn, especially if we are coming to practice with any experiences of historic restriction, which most of us likely have encountered. But choosing what we are consistent with, your post made me think, IS truly an ultimate freedom. Thanks for this reminder to get on the mat 🙂Hi Mike,
I agree–expectation is resentment in reverse 🙂 and when I bring mine to any experience, I’m still trying in some way to be that experience’s author. I appreciate your invitation to be more expansive and openDuring our practice today, a thought that I would try to release kept coming back. It was an image of a delicious-looking dinner that I had walked past yesterday, but this image did not feel as pleasant as that dinner had looked. The image had some sense of impatience and some distinctly loud imagery.
“I must just be hungry,” I thought and tried to send it away. But it returned. A few times of this and then instead of sending it away, I asked this image if it could please show me its qualities rather than coming so strong as a picture. I even told it that it could stick around if it needed to. Then, the image cleared: I started to feel a sense of sunlight on my face a sort of aliveness in my fingertips. That’s what hope feels like to me.
I have been feeling such a large grief recently that I have not been hungry and when I eat it has been mindlessly reaching for what’s nearby. Overall, I have been feeling disconnected from my body. Here, this image/thought/dinner was taking advantage of a moment of stillness to show me what I might actually be hungry for. And maybe to remind me that with just a little effort, I might be able to have a different experience than the one I’ve been having.
I thanked this image and its sunlight and returned my attention to my breath. I was then able to have a reasonably grounded experience.
Later, when we were learning Our View, I got the sense that I had acted as a guide to myself (or, my hunger, or grief) during practice: I met distraction with acceptance, had the sense that to be able to embody my attention I needed to first acknowledge that something needed attention, made a conscious return, and tried very hard not to bring judgment to what felt like a bit of a misbehaving student at first. In the future, I think that doing a bit of writing BEFORE practice might help me to have at least a head start on knowing the parts of myself I might be sitting with. But having space to practice as I am with what I have in any given moment allows for a full-bodied/hearted experience of discovery, which is something that I need and hope to one day be able to share with others. I also think it is a tremendous gift when our teachers, as Susan continues to do, reminds us that it’s good news to wake up and that we can bring our attention to the next breath and begin there.
Hi, I’m Jersey. I live in NYC with my partner B and a lovely deaf, feral Maine Coon called Greta Garbo who may sometimes grace us with her presence during class time. I began practicing Metta about 6 years ago at a friend’s encouragement and recently have been searching for ways to deepen my practice and connect with others on this path. Very grateful to be a part of this group and OHP and looking forward to the adventure ahead.
