Breathing Day 222

Thank you for being here. I reach out needing help and you buoy me with your tender words and presence. Do you know what a lifeline you are?

Sometimes I get confused.

I watch this video, for example, and I think I know what he means when he says we are running and we’ve been running our whole lives. I certainly know what he means by smiling at the blue sky.

Sometimes I latch onto meditation practice and it just becomes another vehicle for my martyr complex to grab hold again. Have you ever known someone who was addicted to suffering or thought there was something pure or noble about self-sacrifice? I have to keep a very close eye out for that demon.

When I watched Olivia’s posts and video about her experience at the breathing workshop that she ended up fleeing, it felt so familiar to me. She related feeling a bit silly because you’d think someone who’d already been down the cult path would recognize a cult-like setup a mile away and steer clear. You’d think. But that’s not how my life is playing out. In my life there are certain plays or dramas I keep repeating as if by repeating them I might finally get it right.

What am I talking about?

Oh. Yeah. I am trying to tell you that I can’t tell the difference between following my heart and running away.

Jon Kabat-Zinn said learning to sit and be in the moment is not to be confused with resignation to a particular situation. Tolle, Ram Dass…they all say it. But I have yet to understand when to act and when to wait until my muddy water clears and the right path paths itself. I think I’m sometimes sitting when I should be acting.

Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy.

Sometimes I am depressed because I am enslaved by a chattery ego, because I am falling for all those crazy-making stories. In those cases mindful breathing can transport me once again to a safe a loving place.

I breathe and come to the present moment. I become aware of the things around me, of my breath coming in and my breath going out. I also become aware of my feelings. Oh, there is anxiety. There is worry. Oh, there goes a thought such and such. Kabat-Zinn teaches me to stand back from the waterfall of thoughts and observe them. Thich Nhat Hanh reminds me to hold my ______ (fill in anger or anxiety or self-reproach)__ like a mother holding a baby.

Sometimes depression, though, could be a signal that I need to change something. Maybe there is something I need to say. Maybe there is something I need to do for myself. Don’t you think sometimes depression can be a signal? Like physical pain that can tell us to move our bodies out of harms way, depression can tell us to move our souls out of harm’s way.

That, so far, is the hard part: knowing when the healthier path is going within to trigger an inner shift and when the healthier path is some form of action.

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Today Sylvain and I went to our favourite nature area. I read a few more chapters in a most wonderful novel and he… well… did THIS!