Snippets 2
When my son was in college I would visit once a month and take him and his girl friend out to lunch. We all loved Thai food so we often chose that. One day after lunch we came back to their dorm and I just had to crash on their couch. My son was concerned and started saying to his girlfriend, “This is not right. Something is really wrong here”. They were talking about me as if I was not there. I wanted to say, “I’m still right here you know!”, but couldn’t quite manage. I was in basically a food coma. Finally I was able to get off the couch and forced myself to go on a long walk with them. That rallied me enough so that I could do the two hour drive home. But I had to agree with my son. Something was not right.
My body was telling me that it no longer could handle high carb food. It was time for me to listen. Of course I didn’t. Give up my beloved cereal in the morning?! Give up sushi?! No way. I was also about twenty five pounds overweight and, according to the charts, obese. I tried low carb diets as a technical hack to lose weight quickly. They worked, but then as soon as I was off the diet my weight would swing right back up. I was yo-yoing up and down ten or more pounds. And a diet that let me eat a pound of bacon for breakfast was not in any way a healthy diet. My body made sure to let me know it, not that I was paying any attention. My ex took to calling me “sausage boy” for all the sausages I would stuff down.
Like many kids my daughter was totally thrown off by the pandemic. She was already struggling with school and now she had to do school online? She did it for a while then just stopped. When school opened again she went for awhile and then stopped again. For most of a semester she could not make herself go. Her mom would drive her right up to the school entrance and she couldn’t get out of the car because she was having such a strong anxiety attack. Even though we were going crazy with anxiety of our own we fortunately did not force her. I realized how lucky we were that she was strong enough to say no. Other parents find out how wrong things are when their kids commit suicide, so I was really grateful for that, but it was a hard time. Then we found an amazing school, Holden high school.
The transformation in Jaiya has been amazing. She went from a very serious, scary depression to lightness and happiness. She feels supported by the school. She actually enjoys learning again! Not everything of course. Math still is a struggle but I think that is just because unfortunately the standard way of teaching math is broken. And the support for the kids is amazing. The school gives every child a trained, licensed therapist as an advocate. Every kid meets with their advocate at least once a week. It is built into the schedule and there is no stigma attached to it. No special meetings where kids are pulled out of class and everyone looks at them. And the advocate gets to know them better and better throughout the year. They even have a meeting with the parents so they can get a better sense of the family dynamics. Why doesn’t every child have an advocate? When I ask people they usually say how expensive it would be. My question is expensive to what? Compared to all the anxious, depressed kids we have? Compared to the kid that is considering suicide?
The next step in this mirror work is to realize that everything we resist in others is that which we resist in ourself. It is also true for emotional attraction. That which we love in others is that which we love in ourself. For example, for a long time I had a resistance to people who had deep, pitted acne scars. The first step was just to simply acknowledge that I had this resistance. Then it didn’t take too much investigation to realize that yep I truly hate my acne scars and here I was almost literally looking in the mirror and not liking what I saw. Sometimes it takes a little more investigation. For example, I sometimes have a resistance to people who are morbidly obese. It is tempting to simply dismiss this as simply not finding that attractive, but the truth is that I have off and on struggled with my weight my whole life. You wouldn’t know it to look at me but it is true. I have this secret fear of simply letting go and ballooning up to an enormous size. That seems like a real possibility. So when I see someone who is quite overweight my resistance comes from me projecting that fear (and judgment) onto that other person. I’m not even really looking at that person! All I can see is that thing I don’t like in myself. It is fine if you doubt this, all I ask is to really get mindful. Notice when you have a strong resistance (or emotional attraction) to someone and then just get curious about why that might be. Hold open the possibility that what you are resisting (or attracted to) is some quite possibly deeply buried part of yourself that you don’t like.
And just like we need to work on looking into a mirror and loving who we see no matter what, we also need to learn to look at others and love what we see, no matter what. That brings us back to the Love principle. Let’s go there next.
In first grade I was walking down a long school hallway and suddenly the sunshine got very strong and I found myself in this gentle but powerful, loving light wrapping all around me. It called to me. Yes. This. I will always step into the light. Always.
My partner would not describe herself as spiritual, but I don’t think that is true. She just isn’t religious; she is actually quite spiritual in her own way. She recently completed the arduous, 500 mile Camino walk in 39 days. It changed her. She carried a stone to commemorate the untimely death of her niece with her the whole way and then laid it down at the ocean at the end of her walk. It helped her let go of a little of her pain and grief. That is such a powerful spiritual ritual. And even though she didn’t get the traditional spiritual experience that a friend of ours described when she did the trail, it changed her in a profound way.
She realized life is simple. We get caught up in superficialities and the things that don’t really matter and she has no patience for that now. What matter is simple and that is where she puts her focus. Coming back has been hard for both of us. There is some big change, some big shift that wants to awaken in her. And she is not completely sure what it is yet. She doesn’t want to just go back to the way things always were. She is different now. It has been a real challenge to our relationship because she doesn’t want to go back to the same partnership with me as before. But as hard as it is ultimately this is very good. This is the core of spiritual intuition — she is listening to a deep knowing of what is alive in her.
She lives to dance. Every year she spends a week teaching dance at a family summer camp. All of the dancing is done to live music. Kids grow up in that camp and love it so much that they come back later as teachers. When I first attended the camp I asked some people why they were so into dancing. With their face glowing people described these perfect, ecstatic moments where they are one with the music and one with everyone swirling around them. I never knew it before then, but dance can be such a profoundly spiritual practice.