Life Worth Living

Progressive Muscle Atrophy is what they say I have, a variant of ALS with a less predictable course, and what I feel is that it takes huge effort to breathe and cope with the pull of gravity. My spine wants to collapse, curve, curl up and rest. And yet I notice that when I activate my muscles gently, with full attention and entire ease, they respond a little. They do hear me. 

It's such hard work. So I ask myself, why do it? What makes this particular life worth living? I am not particularly struggling with the popular question of what good am I. It's true that I don't seem to be of much use. This week I finally told all my clients/patients that I won't be back to work, and that hurt.

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Even the Good Stuff

Sit with it, psychology supervisors would say in grad school.  She needs to sit with her sadness, guilt, dilemma, etc.  In practice, I learned that most clients interpret this as submitting to their inner attacker until it hurts a lot, really really enough, and then, having done their duty, getting back to what’s actually fun and lively.  Fortunately, as I sat in my own meditation, I was able to clarify the process and then guide clients through it.  Sitting with it means that we allow the connection between thoughts and feelings to dissolve.  When they stop reinforcing each other,  we are freed from repetitive loops and we can actually move on, not just push through.  

But here’s the thing:  When stuff feels awful, we work pretty hard at this.  We get good at identifying our inner critical introjects and naming them as thoughts and not obeying them and returning to our sensation and All That.  Because we want to feel better, right?  But then we do.  We feel better.  And then we’re done, we think.  No more pain.  I graduated.  But…  then… alas.   It slips away.   What happened to that good feeling?  

That’s the question in the air, along with

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Happiness is Attention

We may not want to believe it but happiness is entirely available, no matter what.  Attention itself makes us happy, not its object.   Says Spinoza, "When the mind regards itself and its own power of activity, it feels pleasure."   Allow me to emphasize: Pleasure!  Not just boring old serenity.   And it's not just regarding the mind that is so much fun.  Attending even to something awful is surprisingly interesting.

Ogre is paying attentionAgain and again, my clients describe the agony of anticipating and imagining a disastrous event.  A huge amount of preparation and tension goes into preventing the dreaded thing, and yet the ACTUAL event is, without fail, a better experience than its imagining. 

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How to Meditate

First off, what is it?   I can't tell you how many times I've heard: I can't meditate.  Right away that tells me that there's some ideal people think they are not reaching.  But reaching is exactly what we don't do when we meditate. So, how do you not reach?  How do you not do?  Start with the certainty that you absolutely cannot do it wrong.   

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