| I fail at enlightenment. :P |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|10:15 pm] |
So I'm reading my Yoga Journal magazine (got a year for something ridiculous like $3, and the first three issues arrived on the heels of each other), and there are two little activities in two separate articles, and my responses to them are...interesting.
The first article advises one to write down two or three words that someone who loves you would use to describe you, the qualities others appreciate about you. Then write the ways that you express these qualities in the world, like cooking or knitting. Then write down your ideal vision of the world. Then put it all together in a sentence like, "I will use my intelligence, spunkiness and humor, through cooking food for the people I love, teaching and making art, to create a world that is peaceful and free of violence and in which everyone has an open mind." Then do it.
AWESOME, really. Except I'm really stuck. I can't bring myself to envision anything so ambitious as world peace, or any such thing...it's just too vast and intimidating, too unrealistic a goal. And I can't think of anything truly realistic that isn't pretty much what I'm doing already.
Awkward.
The second article suggests you bring to mind a sage, saint or other human you deeply admire. Or, if no one comes to mind, choose one of the qualities of enlightened consciousness, like compassion or love. Then, think deeply about it, put yourself in their shoes (what would X do?), including if they were living your life. Meditate and affirm that this spirit/ideal is within you, filling you, etc. Then address the specifics of how, filled with this spirit, you would go through your life...how you'd treat your spouse/parents/children/strangers, etc. Then do it (for the remainder of the half hour this is supposed to take, although I think the idea is to ultimately transform yourself, etc.)
So, great idea, the sort of advice I'd happily give to others. But it gets awkward for me again. I admire Buddha. Smart guy. Really enlightened, I truly believe that. But if I ask myself what he'd do in my life, it starts with "leave my spouse and children and walk the monk's path", and, um, not so much with the appealing. I LOVE my spouse and children, and I don't WANT to do that. I also LIKE life. A lot. I don't want to distance myself from it...I love all the mess of it, truly. So, okay, I can't follow Buddha's lead. Well, of all the people I know, there's no one I'd rather be than me. I love you. I admire many qualities about you, and even emulate them in many cases. (Goodness knows how much I've altered myself due to Tom's example!) But you all, as I do, have your flaws...I don't look up to any of you enough to idolize you like that. So, okay, how about the "qualities of enlightened consciousness"? Well, I do strive to live up to them, but the idea of having them be all-encompassing rather offends my sense of balance, of moderation. I do believe in too much of a good thing. All love, all the time? Goodness, but that would be alienating! And weird. And I LIKE my muck, my perfectly justified less-than-completely-loving thoughts and feelings. They make me human. Alive. Vibrant. I don't want to fade into the ether of perfection just yet.
What do I think Buddha (or the Dalai Lama) would tell me? Maybe next lifetime. Sounds like you need to live this one. Which is the very conclusion I come to myself, so I'd be in good company.
It's terribly funny, though, in that "a little bit funny-haha, a little bit more funny-strange" kind of way, that I feel this way, that I find myself in this place in my life, the bad daughter, the disappointing one, the fat girl no one ever really loved...the lonely misfit...the non-rebellious non-conformist freaky alien child. Where and how on earth did she end up HERE? A lot of work, a little luck, yeah, but, still, what a wild, wild world. |
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