Internal invisible

I have spent the last hour and  a half not writing this post.  I unpainted my toe nails.  I showered and blew out my hair.  I considered whether to start a pot of chick peas for tomorrow night’s dinner.  I read my usual slate of blogs and clicked on more links than I normally do.  I am fighting the impulse right now to pop down to the basement and start another load of laundry.   So I need to write this post.

This morning I went to a three hour yoga and meditation workshop.  I signed up for this workshop in January, when I got an email alert that my favorite yoga teacher would be in town.  I didn’t read the description too carefully — I just made sure there was a Sunday session and signed up immediately.

The workshop started with meditation.  The teacher (not my favorite yoga teacher, but a special meditation teacher) walked us through a short mindfulness meditation, in which we focused on our breath and gently labelled all our thoughts “thinking” and got back to breath.  We probably meditated for about 10 minutes, and it felt like an hour.  It occurred to me that if I were ever in a situation in which I knew I had 5 minutes left to live, I would do mindfulness meditation because that 5 minutes would seem endless (that’s not really what I would do, but that was some of the “thinking” that was happening).  It was almost excruciating to concentrate like that.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other women in the workshop (all women, save for one brave and flexible man) starting to wiggle and fidget.  I wiggled and fidgeted.   It was difficult, but bearable and instructive and I felt rather pleased with myself since meditation was one of my intentions for this year.

Then we turned to maitri or loving-kindness meditation.  Maitri meditation is a kind of 5×4 matrix.  In the practice I learned this morning, you start by thinking of someone that you love abundantly and unconditionally — or someone who loves you that way.  I thought of my beloved friend who blog readers know as “a sister.”  Then you go through the following litany of wishes, imagining what that might look like or is to that person:

• May you be safe (I imagined her and her family and her home and her car and her commuter train surrounded by a golden force field);
• May you be happy (I imagined her happy, which was very easy);
• May you be healthy (I imagined her running and playing soccer and I imagined calcium strengthening her bones and a strong heart)
• May you be at ease (I imagined her in a calm place, maybe a room with a clean white bed and green walls.)

Then you do the same for yourself, for someone about whom you feel neutral, then for an enemy or someone who is annoying you or challenging you, then for the whole world.

For the neutral person, I chose the woman sitting next to me, who had asked a question about how to do the meditation’s third step with someone you can’t forgive yet.  For the enemy, I imagined the acquaintance who is pregnant with her second child and who I would like never to see or hear about again.  And for the whole world I was kind of vague but thought of a variety of faces and people.

Here’s the upsetting thing.  When I turned to the second step, “May I be safe; May I be happy; May I be healthy; May I be at ease” I couldn’t see myself as any of those things.  My mental eye, usually so clear and imaginative, was staring into utter darkness.  I thought, “Oh, broken and busted up me,” and couldn’t get past it. I couldn’t imagine safe, or happy.  I imagined healthy well enough.  I couldn’t really imagine at ease, either.

This was news I didn’t want.  I didn’t want to know that I am empty inside to myself.  If you were to ask me, I’d say that I do feel safe, happy, healthy, and at ease.  I’d say that I worry that I am too focused on myself and not nearly generous enough to Daniel because I need to make sure that I am comfortable and taken care of.  I’d say I was pretty good at self care.

But I realized that… that maybe I treat myself like a nurse treats a patient, not like a lover treats a beloved, or a parent treats a child, or a good person treats a dog.  I am well-fed, well-clothed (too well for my budget, sometimes), and well-enough-exercised.  But I may not be well-self-beloved (I bet there’s one crazy long word in German that gets that concept).

And here’s the problem with that.  Not being well-self-beloved is, I think, hindering my ability –almost completely blocking my ability — to be fully empathetic and present to Daniel.  I keep getting really upset that he’s not doing this filling-up for me and I see all his limitations, but really I’m asking him to do something that he can’t do for me.  He, by the way, does exactly the same thing with me.  His neediness is a reflection of his lack of WSB-ness.

Now, this is something I’m supposed to know.  It’s a cliche beyond cliche to say that you can’t love others without loving yourself.  But you know, you can get pretty far down the path of what looks and feels and tastes like love without being radically enamored of yourself in a healthy way.

So my new task is to be not blank to my own imagination.  I can always imagine disastrous things happening to me — that’s easy for me, I’m very good and well-practiced at it.  I have not ever cultivated the ability to imagine good or great things happening to me.  I am too terrified of disappointment to do that.  But the point is to cultivate an attitude toward myself, not to make promises of the future.  It’s still terrifying, though.  I am terrified at some level of imaging safety and happiness — what if it doesn’t look at all like what I have now?  (Happiness was supposed to be two kids, or more!) What do I do then?

But it appears that not trying to find out is in fact an absence of loving-kindness to myself.  What a terrible pity.  It’s time to take that risk.  It’s time to do the next kind of work in getting on with it.