Every day unfolds the next step in my journey

Today's meditation centering thought was, every day unfolds the next step in my journey. It's about getting unstuck. This message was about intention and seeking awareness. So I was thinking what is my intention? What do I want? What I want most is Jim. And obviously I know I can't have that. So then, what do I want next most? I think what I want most is peace.

I want to not worry about what was, and what will never be. I want to enjoy the blessings of the present moment.

Merriam Webster defines peace as follows:
Full Definition of peace
1:  a state of tranquility or quiet: as
a :  freedom from civil disturbance
b :  a state of security or order within a community provided for by law or custom <a breach of the peace>
2:  freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions
3:  harmony in personal relations
4a :  a state or period of mutual concord between governments
b :  a pact or agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity

Peace, then, is the absence of tension, freedom from disquieting thoughts. A state of quiet calm.


One of my walking meditation mantras is "why worry if there is something you can do? If there is nothing you can do, why worry?"

I cannot change the fact that Jim is gone. Yet, it continues for disturb my sense of tranquility. When I leave my awareness of the present moment, when I replay the past. or worry about the future, is when I go out of peace.

There was a song I grew up with, "Let There Be Peace on Earth"  written by Jill Jackson Miller and Sy Miller in 1955. In part, the lyrics go like this:

Let this be the moment now;

...

To take each moment and live each moment

In peace eternally.

Let there be peace on earth

And let it begin with me

So how can I work to stay peaceful? Meditation helps.  Allowing space for happy memories and not dwelling in the sad. By allowing the turmoil to go on around me, but to not let it own me or overtake me. By connecting with people, places and activities that help me find a sense of peace... walking on the beach, enjoying the sunset, sitting by the fire chatitng with friends, petting my dog... all done mindfully and with intention. I can create peace making new memories, finding new ways to be content, to feel loved and safe. By making a commitment every day to live more peacefully. And to let it begin with me.

Getting Unstuck. Part 1

Today's meditation mantra or centering thought was "I embrace the newness of each day". The mantra was the wholeness of the universe is my true self. So I've been meditating on getting unstuck with Deepak and Oprah. The thing that I feel stuck in is my grief. It's not that I don't believe that I'm going to grieve forever. I am. I can't help it, it's part of who I am and always will be. Jim will always be a part of who I am and the loss of Jim that was always a part of who I am, as well. And I am okay with that.

But what I do need to figure out is how I go on living with that grief being a part of who I am. I've been putting a pretty good show. I've been keeping busy and doing interesting things and even doing a little bit of traveling. But in my heart I still feel like a charlatan. I feel like I am going through the motions and at some point everybody's going to see through that and see that really I'm just a sad, sad person who's pretending to be happy. So what I have been trying to figure out is: how I move beyond the sadness of grief, and move into the living with grief and eventually the thriving with/despite grief.

What I'm working on now is the revelation that I had today that the wholeness of the universe includes Jim's spirit. I absolutely do not believe that our spirit dies. I don't know what happens after death, I don't know if there's heaven. I don't know if there's reincarnation. But I do believe our spirit lives on.

So if our spirit lives on, then our spirit is part of the universe, And the wholeness of the universe is part of my true self. So Jim will always be a part of me and that's never going to go away! Maybe I am not stuck at all and I am just continuing to integrate this new reality into my consciousness.

It is, I am, A work in progress.

Each day is an opportunity to accept my grief as part of my new normal, and embrace the life that I still have left to live.

Everything happens for a reason??

Um, yeah, no, as my friend Marie would say.

When something bad happens, often people, well meaning people might say, 'everything happens for a reason.' I believe this is just the 10% of our brains we use trying to make sense of a sometimes senseless world. My spouse died from complications of cancer treatment at the age of 53. What is the reason? I've had friends lose a spouse when they had young children at home. Where is the reason in that? I had a miscarriage. Not sure I know the plan there. And people I know have borne the unbearable death of a their child. Certainly no one can see the reason in that, yet, we persist in looking for meaning.

I was raised in deep Baptist tradition. We were taught that everything that happens is part of God's plan. And I believed that. Until I didn't. I learned about free will, if we had a choice, then how did our free will fit into a master plan? And I learned about hunger, hatred, war and abuse. I wasn't sure how any of that could fit into God's plan. See, my god is a loving god. So I searched for a way to make sense of all the bad things in the world and still cling to my belief in a loving God. 

In the early 80s I first read Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  His son was diagnosed with a rare disease at about three years old and they knew he would not live past his teens. Kushner, a rabbi, asked many of the same questions I have struggled with. But finally, he writes, We too need to get over the questions that focus on the past and on the pain—“ Why did this happen to me?”—and ask instead the question which opens doors to the future: “Now that this has happened, what shall I do about it?”

I do believe in God. And I think God is really, really busy with really important things. And so he allows us to make choices, and live with those choices. He allows diseases to progress. And he allows us to discover ways to fight and treat them. He allows hatred, just as he allows love. It is our job, in this life, to love one another, to love ourselves, and take care of each other.

Yet, still when I hear that my life is aligned with some cosmic plan, it breaks my heart. Why do I have to go through the sadness, the loss, the grief and loneliness for some cosmic plan to reveal itself? What wonderful plan could possibly be worth it? Even so, in Jim's illness, and since his death, we never asked, "why me?"  Why not me? 

I've often said the few things I regret in life are the things I didn't do. That even bad breakups where I thought my heart would never recover, led me to the life I loved....my life with Jim. Even so, I can't conceive of a time where I will look back on his death and see the cosmic plan. I don't want to think that there could ever be a moment where his death seemed okay, justified or even right.  

Today's meditation manta was, There is a way I can fulfill my true purpose in life. It is still so hard to see how, or maybe why, my true purpose will be fulfilled without Jim. But not living this life to its fullest would be an insult to Jim's memory. He so embraced life and to his last breath, he did not want to give up. I strive to live with the same enthusiastic energy and joy. 

Kushner summarizes,

In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened. Are you capable of forgiving and accepting in love a world which has disappointed you by not being perfect, a world in which there is so much unfairness and cruelty, disease and crime, earthquake and accident? Can you forgive its imperfections and love it because it is capable of containing great beauty and goodness, and because it is the only world we have?? Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be? And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world?