Day 15 of Self Love-Challenge

“When positive or joyous feelings and attitudes pass through each organ and circulate throughout our whole system, our physical and chemical energies are transformed and balanced.”

Tarthang TulkuAbove you see a Medicine Buddha Thanka.  A dear Tibetan friend brought it to me when he visited.  His father was a famous Thanka painter in Ladakh, and passed away while my friend was here. I am so blessed to have such a powerful gift and spirit in my meditation room.  In Buddhism, we are taught that everything has the power to heal and cure.  That means, anything we encounter in life.  The people, their actions, words, situations, everything.  That means the painful situations too.  They serve as beneficial medicine.

This is an important concept because it means that so often our well being is in our own hands.  The world and everything in it can be used to heal our heart and restore our health.  Words, relationships, medicines, diet, friends, massage, nature, crystals, prayer, animals…..The list is endless.

The Medicine Buddha is my personal spirit guide.  I require healing and I also had spent many years as a nurse, healing others.  Many mornings I sit in front of him and intellectually know, healing comes from the mind and yet, despite much practice, my heart still hurts.  It’s a lifelong practice, this healing.

I look at him, perfect in balance.  His internal and external harmony exists.  He sits in Lotus position and in a form such as Shakyamuni did.  Brilliant in sapphire blue he sits with his right hand holding a healing plant called myrobalan.  Sometimes. it’s as if he is actually handing it to me.  His fingers touch the earth, a place where I also find comfort.   His left hand is in mudra and holds a monk’s begging bowl that is filled with healing elixir called “the nectar of deathlessness.”

And yet, my heart still hurts.  My body is still in pain and ill.  I will continue for as long as it takes.  I want to be cleansed of the toxins from my past and present.  I want to be rid of the negativities,, the fears, illusions and karmic imprints.  The energy flows between us and amongst us all.  After all. thats all we are is energy.  We are all connected and are of one.  All of us.

It has been a difficult week and I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut by another mode of rejection.  Silly perhaps, but the energy swirls around me as I fend it off with my spiritual practice, understanding and forgiveness in my heart.  It doesn’t have to be this difficult when we all want the same things.  To be loved.  To be heard.  To be happy and wanted.  It really doesn’t have to be so hard..but it is.

Today’s practice and solitude are gifts to my body.  It can’t take any more battles and beatings from outside energies.  For too long, I pushed it and pushed it, demanding it perform under almost inhumane circumstances of the  chaotic energy of adoption and reunion, never mind the actual physical demands.  It tried to tell me, to show me, to make me pay attention but I, being the good little adoptee just kept going.  Now, even with the help of Medicine Buddha and  a healing package from Ayu Lhamo a Shaman in Ladakh my body weakens and screams in pain.

My mind, is learning to let go, despite not understanding, but knowing the realities of what is..With this comes healing.

When you try to become mindful of your your thoughts it covers almost everything.  The entirety of consciousness, all of our moods and emotional reactions.  It’s becoming aware of how we alone conceptually construct our world and it’s reality.  In this way, we can let go of who we used to be and be renewed.  It helps me deal with my sadness and also how I experience joy.  Acceptance and equanimity..that’s the ultimate goal.

Once we are no longer tied to who we used to be and how we think things should be….based on the past…We become free to be authentically who we are.

Center yourself in the moment and relax.

Let go of your thoughts.

Just let them come and go and settle down.

Breathe in through your nostrils.

Relax and breathe out, saying Ahhhh

Hold out your breath for a moment of emptiness .

Stay centred, and allow yourself a moment of being, just being….

So simple, so free and easy…..

Today, I will remember to accept myself as the person I am now, not the person I used to be.  I will re-energize and allow my body to feel the change and rest.  I will smile knowing I am on the right path.  I will just be….

Day 8 of Self-Love Challenge

This is what we say in the “mast cell world” when the mast cells take over.  My challenge for the last few days was to pay attention and take care of myselfsomething I have been known to avoid, ignore, not believe it was needed anything to just keep going.  I know I wrote about that in another post.  Obviously it’s something I need a lot of practice in.  

This past week, I had appointments with doctors on the last 3 days and that, was all I could manage.  I wanted to write, I sat down to write, but the words wouldn’t come and the eyes wouldn’t see…so I lay down where I should have been in the first place..

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

  If I am only for myself, what good am I?

    And if not now,, when?

     -Hillel

Growing up, there was no such thing as self-care.  I’m sure those of us from the 50’s know what I’m talking about.  Imagine…no spa’s, no holiday’s, no relaxing by the beach with a book, no yoga classes, no pedicures or dining out.

 Horrors!  I can hear it now…”What! No spa? No yoga class?  What did you do?  Well, my darlings…we worked.  We worked in the garden, we canned, we painted rooms and ceilings and floors and then washed the dirty clothes in a wringer washer that you had to manually stand and feed the clothes through the ringer..Yup…stand.  And then, it was time to get dinner ready.

We are now in an era of excessive self care…not excessive self love, let me make that clear but for many of us…now..us older folk..self love is the reason we don’t do much self care.. 

Did you follow that?  

There is nothing  you have to do to earn your self-love and self -acceptance. We are good enough, smart enough,

We aren’t broken and we don’t need to be fixed.  But, herein lies the paradox. If we are perfect just the way we are, then why are we on the self-improvement treadmill.  Why do we push ourselves to the brink of  no return.

Self acceptance people!  Feeling okay about where we are right now and just being in that space until it’s time to move forward.

How often have you attended to others when you yourself were tired and wanting?  How often have you filled someone else’s cup when yours was empty?

It used to be considered selfish and unkind to attend to ourselves first.  We, the older generation were taught to put others before ourselves always.  There has to be a balance.  To stay on our path, to focus on our visions there is something to be said for appropriate time for self care.  Many of us are still  relearning that belief to include ourselves in the care.

Thus, my last few days of unwritten blog entry’s were taken up by self-care.