Lathe of Heaven (LeGuin)

I have become a fan of Ursula LeGuin.  She is deep, philosophical, profound.  This morning while I drank my chai tea I picked up the Dalai Lama's treatise on The Heart Sutra.  I learned to chant the Heart Sutra in English and Japanese at a Zen Center.  I must have chanted it along with the pounding rhythmic drumming 100's of times.  There were phrases that really sank deeply.  Like a koan, it is not an intellectual understanding one is reaching for -or  "grasps" - but one that runs through to being's core, resonating with truth, needing no words, holding no doubt.  So I repeated phrases, and felt through the words for the resonating truth.  Many years separated the period when I chanted and this time when I simply read about the deeper teachings within the Heart Sutra.  The piece I read this morning was about understanding the concept of "no Self" - the impermanence of Self.  The phrase that tripped me the most years ago was "no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind - no sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomena."  I attempted to "grasp" how there were none of these things and yet they were there - the opposite of the "no" existed simultaneously.  As I read about the concept of the absolute Self and the relative Self that is the puzzle itself, I remembered how I puzzled and attempted to "grasp" the experience of Orr (the dreamer) in Lathe of Heaven.  Whether LeGuin meant in any way to write a story that told of the experience of letting go of self/Self she did - for me at this time of a deep personal struggle.  A story that epitomizes the experience of "'waking up" to a new place of being, literally, and accepting what you find.  And a new personality as well.  For Orr, existing simultaneously for him was the knowledge that he (Orr) himself was responsible, unintentionally most of time time, for the change coming into true reality.  Something within his brain caused it.  So he was not helpless or truly just a victim of himself.  He was a part of the whole process.  He always remembered the old even as he knew the "new!"  His acceptance of what was - or the just thisness as the Zenies would describe it - was admirable.  Fitting quite nicely into the Dalai Lama's writings.  Interesting don't you think, to find resonating similarity between a science fiction story and the Heart Sutra?!

Riding a Tiger

In Zen Osho Tarot, there is a card that shows a young man riding up into the sky on a tiger. I think the tiger represents conquering a fear of that which holds us back. But since there are so many things to hold us back, fear-based or not, this tiger will change its stripes often that like our hearts and minds! I was pondering my current "tiger" - the one I had thought I could not face, in fact, it had control of me for years. It was the foundation of so much that needed to change and I just couldn't do it. I kept hanging on even though there was no logic to it. My world would crumble to pieces or something if I didn't not hang on tightly, twist myself around it like smoke from the smoker sitting near you. I was sure that the singularity would occur in that moment of my embracing my tiger. Tigers are very scary, right? Man-eaters. Woman-eaters. But the time had come. There was nothing left to be gained. It was time to wrap my arms around my tiger while it was resting under the Bodhi tree, (I like Bodhi trees - the Buddha found enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi tree.) I dared it to eat me, if I died it might even feel good in some kind of twisted way. I was pretty scared. It felt like something had physically shifted within me as I gripped it. My eyes felt tears trying to burn their way out. But this tiger had scared me too long. No time for tears. Odd, it didn't eat me. It growled low and deep. The singularity happened and didn't happen at the same time. I realized in that moment that my tiger was not scary anymore. He had first looked at me with fierce hungry challenging eyes but now I saw acceptance and respect there too as I searched for signs of imminent death. The same acceptance and respect entered within my heart and mind as I saw it there, too. I was strong. Not weak. Free - er. Taming my tiger had made me far stronger than I had imagined it would. I had been afraid I might die. But I didn't. My tiger and I were one. ---- There will be a new tiger I know in my future. One with different stripes, lying under a different tree. The moment of knowing when it is time to embrace that tiger will come within the flow, be it suffering or joy, and it will not seem strange. The moment of knowing is one that the tiger is ready for just as you will be.

What's in a Name

I was given the name at birth of "Julie Romaine."  I was told, when I grew old enough to remember it, that it was the name of an actress in one of Guy de Maupassant's short stories.  An actress who loved and I felt died from love's injury.  I was born too with my Venus quincunx Pluto.  I looked it up.  It means that I become obsessional about loving.  I love, perhaps, not wisely.  My mother ripped out a few pages from her "Harper's Magazine," the other day, telling me I should read "it."  I looked through the few pages, found the first to be by the editor of Harper's, Roger D. Hodge.  He described the progressives' disappointment with Obama's broken promises.  It hurt to read it.  A part of me doesn't want to believe it can all be true - the apparent selling out to the pressures of business as usual in Washington.  I know it must be very difficult to try to be the one who brings change to those who resist it with all of their being.  I turned the pages and found a review of a translation edition of Guy de Maupassant's writing, Alien Hearts.  Knowing the name and its association with my name, I began to read the review.  Lorin Stein is a true writer herself.  Bravo! 

 

I was struck by her statement (based on an apparent deep study of de Maupassant as a person as well as a writer):  "What most troubled and delighted Maupassant's readers was his erotic identification with women.  He saw them as sexual objects, and he saw himself as a sexual object."  As a published writer of not quite a decade, he began at the end to look deeper into his characters, to express more than the words they said to each other, the thoughts they had about each other (which has been his intellectual and emotional choice) he began to be a writer of the "psychological" novel - thus, Alien Hearts is an example.  Along with my name, my experience of love, I have encountered another thing in common.  The choice to go deep.  Psychologically.

A birthday

I haven’t written in my blog for a while. I got rid of a couple of semi-hysterical entries (thank god we can do that!) and have been settling in emotionally since October.

I made an entry in my Google id page that described what I’m good at as “Being Mom.” It is what I am. Good or not. I manage anyway. I am not always as loving as I want to be, but I am always there, always willing to talk, to forgive, to reach out, to bend, and that’s “loving” in action. So that’s what I do.
What I am remains a work in progress. Haven’t figured much out there. Often I am in touch with some inner voice that lingers in the background saying figuring oneself out is an ongoing thing, not meant to STOP. I am not unique in this. It is the same for all of us. I realized recently that my period of grieving over what I thought might happen in my life and my youngest daughter’s life has taken time to heal.

I had to go through those stages. I looked them up and wrote them down in front of my computer for a while. And I doubt I’m done with them. But I feel more at peace with the way things are now. I react less. I accept more. I fall into just what is. I really enjoy the peace in my mind I have now. Not thinking so much. I can just “BE” more and more. Washing dishes, sorting clothes. Just doing. Not thinking the way I used to when I was suffering so, fighting against things so. I push too hard to make my little world what I THINK it should be.

Some of that is what my HEART wants too. I remember now, this moment, the story of The Alchemist (I entered a quote from it here on this blog – about the HEART – what the heart wants). I have relearned that everything going on within me and those I love is so much more complex and interconnected than I can possibly really get.
My heart is my heart alone. It is private and alone with its aches and wants. It beats its presence as a reminder and sometimes it beats faster when I connect with someone very dear to me. But it is always a private heart and alone. The Heart has no rights except to experience itself - to feel its own beating as a reminder that life continues – a reminder too that all beings live with the same Heart that is private and alone. What is it really that the Heart wants?

I hope. I trust. I appreciate. I pray for all of us. My heart urges all of that. My heart wants that. I feel my love. I live it - the best I can. Forgiving self and others as needed. Living life just as it has been given to me to do each day. Being Mom, being friend – daughter – sister – co-worker. Being me.