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Day 38-41 of … Shame

Posted by Jane at 2:54 am No Responses »

Feb 112012

I come to writing today wrung out, hollowed, disappointed, ashamed. I can forgive myself the days that lapsed since my last entry. I sank into the recesses of a cave, and there I went through the motions of life in the grip of a depression so strange I can not easily shrug it off as chemical or worn neural pathways or… Is it just as I feared – the moral weakness of my soul stripped bare leaves me to such suffering?

I avoided self-hate, while hating everything that I did and created. I still created, but it felt too much like a mechanical scrabbling in the dark. I observed my brain, the object of my disease, and with that objectivity lost any sense of compassion I could feel for it. This was the past, but for a while, this was my present.

It began with the evening of the hospital. Pain, dehumanizing enough, perhaps was the catalyst. Seeking some kind of new answer to the stale problem of my kidney pain, I ventured there. The doctors and nurses were kind enough in their way. I felt heard, validated, even as I realized they could do nothing for an unknown problem. Even now I wait for the results of a scan that I fear will be too much like past ones. I wonder how it is medicine can only deal with pain when bodies are exploding. When it is a quiescent form of flesh and bone, it seems the body will never reveal its secrets.

Perhaps it was the Toradol they fed to me intraveneously, offering to help ease the pain. The doctor was extending compassion as he knew how. It didn’t reach me, perhaps because I was already beyond my body, in the realm of the mind. Slowly, the dark cavern of depression spread around me, and all I could do was be a remote observer, seeing how it sucked the joy out of the moment. Each moment that came in its wake was equally grey and lifeless.

Somehow, I blamed myself for being weak, for going to the hospital, when perhaps I wasn’t really ill. My body wasn’t exploding, and the pain, though real, was contained.

Now, I pause.

I see this is how it was, for so many of my adult years. And I feel a faint tint of orange compassion spilling over the chasm of my blue prison. I never asked to be ill. I never wanted this. God knows, I never got any advantage from it. It just was.

It just was. It just is. It’s not my fault.

God knows, it is not my fault.

Blessings,
Jane

Day 37 of … Compassion for my Younger Self #2

Posted by Jane at 10:14 pm No Responses »

Feb 062012

Heart of Compassion #1 © 2012 Jane Waterman

These are not the colours of my sadness and pain. The colours of the emotions I feel for the younger self I wrote about yesterday. Her sorrows are deep purples and blues, stretching into long twilights, the one searching the stars for one that might assuage her loneliness. Her longings are mauves and violets, the brief, barely felt surge when someone noticed her, when she thought she was important enough to connect to. I don’t know why I never liked her, why I never loved her.

She had this way of looking at the world that was expansive, seeing the multi-dimensions of the moment: feelings as colours, touch as pain, loneliness as a weight on her soul. She saw things in a way that I could never understand, me with my world reduced to equations of motion – she was the quantum mechanics to my solid indivisible atoms. She was the relativity theory to my Newtonian frame.

I see her with pale blue eyes, large, that shift in a moment to take on the colours of her surroundings. She noticed the small living things that noone had time for, and the feelings that people couldn’t feel. Her heart broke over so many things, and yet she put it back together and kept loving others as she could never love herself.

I see her now through the lens of compassion. Time is no barrier to stepping back to be beside her. Even for a middle child, spanned by five years either side, I can march up to her and whirl her around. I wonder if she would like that? I could dance with her, carry her on a merry jig, and enfold her in my love.

These are the colours of compassion, the unfolding flower that I give to her.

I think I can see her smiling.

Love,
Jane

Day 32 of … The Dreaming

Posted by Jane at 11:23 pm No Responses »

Feb 012012

Today, every word, every brush stroke, met with judgement. While I enjoyed the colours meshing and colliding, there was nothing in those moments of pure creation that I wanted to keep. Nothing I judged worthwhile enough to commit to posterity. I suppose that’s okay too. I remember a time when I wandered quite happily in my head, and no acts of imagination seemed too wild – all could be pondered and explored, embraced and then let go.

When you have lost large pieces of your life and put them back together, I suppose a sense of disconnect is not unexpected. Attachment to thoughts is different too. You seek moments of brilliance, and your inner perfectionist has to settle for mediocrity.

I will not settle, however, for less than a return to that dreaming state.

This afternoon I felt exhausted and light-headed. I rested on the bed for a moment, and it was as if I stepped back in time to some other half-sunny place. Outside was an expansive sense of spring, and it seemed at odds with the midwinter, but then not. I had to go to an appointment and listened to tales of holidays in Hawaii and Mexico. My first thought was – I couldn’t go there – not with all that sun.

Given a choice, would I? If the sun had not become an enemy, where would I go? I do miss the beautiful beaches of my childhood and early adult life. I would “go bush”, walk to a mysterious billabong, bowed down to by eucalypts and sandstone cliffs. I would cross rivers infested with crocodiles, trap tadpoles, and weave grasses into bracelets. I would wonder about my brothers catching yabbies, and what a yabbie was. I never did get to see one.

Where would you go if you didn’t automatically say, “I can’t” or “I couldn’t”? What places in memory would open up? Would you be, as I was for a moment, ten years old, and “gone bush”? Would you come back?

Blessings,
Jane

Day 31 of … 4am

Posted by Jane at 11:16 pm No Responses »

Jan 312012

The first month of my personal 365 day blogging project has passed. In some ways, it’s become a deeper creative exploration. I am enjoying painting with the computer immensely. Last night I’d barely drifted off to sleep when pain woke me up again. At 4am I started painting some pictures.

I still have gifts that I intended to send at Christmas, but it looks like these will now be Valentine’s gifts, and I know that is okay.

I am still learning the art of balancing. Like this soul cloud, I reach out in all directions as emotions swirl around me.

I continue to learn, and hope that over time, I can begin to teach. I feel the stirrings of different projects inside me, and feel the sparks of possibility ignite.

Blessings,
Jane

Day 30 of … Reaching Out

Posted by Jane at 10:35 pm 2 Responses »

Jan 302012

These words are sent out into the world with love and compassion. I dedicate them to my wife and daughters.

You are good enough, strong enough and beautiful enough. That doesn’t mean you can’t be tired, scared and vulnerable too. Those feelings are all a part of us.

Don’t selectively obscure or shade your multi-faceted brilliance or your darkness, just to make yourself palatable to the world. Celebrate who you are. You are loved exactly for who you are, even if that may change at any given moment.

You are allowed to change your mind, have moments of doubt, flounder, or feel afraid. Those are things we’re made to feel. Don’t use those feelings as proof that you haven’t lived up to a standard of normality or perfection that is impossible.

Treasure yourself and nurture yourself. It’s not selfish to take the rest you need, to replenish the soul force that motivates you and which you give so readily to others. You deserve your care too.

When you feel most afraid, reach out. Maybe I’ll be afraid too, but we can hold on together. I’ve been there in those small hours of the night when dreams turn to nightmares and joy turns to pain. Whatever you may feel, just remember this – you are not alone.

You are loved, treasured and valued for what you bring to this world with you. I’m so glad we chose to travel through this life together.

I am so proud of you.

I love you.

Jane

Day 27 of … Contraction

Posted by Jane at 1:14 pm No Responses »

Jan 272012

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence after yesterday’s ‘Conflagration’, but today I feel an often experienced need to contract within myself, to draw in closer for protection. Writing and creating and putting myself out there every day is likely a factor in this increased sensitivity, but for the moment I’ll continue, as I’ve had so many feelings of growth from this process.

The feelings of sensitivity and fragility erupted earlier this week, and still continue, so I’m honouring those feelings and observing them, and seeing myself as safe within them.

Lots of work due this weekend, but I think I need some more time out in nature… good time to take the dogs for a walk with my Beloved, and find some moments of rest in the chaos.

Even as I contract, I sense a different quality to it, in that I long to keep sending loving-kindness and compassion to those around me.

I hope this weekend you treat yourself with the same kindness, and make the time to do something gentle and nurturing for yourselves.

Blessings,

Jane

Day 26 of … Facing Fire

Posted by Jane at 11:04 pm No Responses »

Jan 262012

This picture is not what I thought I was feeling. When I reach for the brush, real or virtual, I’m never sure what will appear.

While my physical self feels more like a grey cinder, when I look at this painting, I wonder if that cinder is carried aloft on the conflagration.

Facing fire, I’m awed not only by its life and dynamics – I’m amazed that somewhere beneath this life is in me.

Time for this cinder to float to the stars.

Blessings,

Jane

Day 24 of … Creation

Posted by Jane at 10:45 pm 1 Response »

Jan 242012

This is the colour of my imagination before it was asked to behave itself, take a seat, and sit up straight. These are the colours I feel most at home in. Anyone who sets foot in our house will attest to that. This is experimentation with Artrage, my favourite computer painting software. I’m playing with colour (obviously) and technique. Just scratching the surface of the dozens of virtual mediums and tools it possesses.

Something about the brushstrokes makes me think of a late William Turner, although I’m sure the colour would make Turner ill. I find myself thinking back to art in high school, and my meagre exposure to his work: fog and steam, trains and boats, on fire in the sunset. I have so much to learn, but it’s been so long since I’ve picked up a brush, virtual or otherwise. I must grant myself permission to be totally mediocre.

I feel a buzz from the act of creation – rioting colours – hints of clouds, sunlight, reflections. It makes my mind sing.

I need to do this more often. We all do.

What act of creation makes your mind sing?

Blessings,

Jane

Day 23 of … Balance

Posted by Jane at 11:59 pm 1 Response »

Jan 232012

I sit around making pictures at 2am in the morning because I’m no good with balance. I’m okay with that, sort of. When you work around an autoimmune disease, and work around the stuff that is as deeply entrenched in the mind as the body, I suppose anything feels like an achievement some days.

This morning, due to pushing myself too much, I was pretty shaky. In fact, I had to meet the challenge lying down. I started my day later, accelerated, trying to remember to cram eating, taking meds, working and finding my cell phone into an hour or two.

I then took an hour off to listen to a webinar on photography. Amazing how afterwards I felt an inordinate amount of guilt because I’d been “slacking off” while the “normal” work world is ticking over. I’m sure even the normal people would have grabbed the chance, if not for a webinar, for some other guilty pleasure.

I’ve been thinking about balance a lot lately, and how much I want it (so taking an hour for me doesn’t seem like a reason for guilt) and yet how reaching for it is exhausting.

Some days you just have to take life as it is, messy, arms flailing, and be happy that you got to squeeze any of these things in, much less sit down at the end of the day to write about it.

I guess balance is what happens when you let life slosh around in some kind of ungainly rhythm.

Blessings,
Jane

Day 21 of … Courage to Slow Down

Posted by Jane at 11:41 pm No Responses »

Jan 212012

Today was a day of contrasts, and this recent computer painting sums it up – the grieving heart surrounded by the energy of the new, the authentic, and the real. Where ‘real’ stands for anything I believe in, including the beautiful dreamer, and her right to lose herself in visions in her own sacred time and place.

We started the morning with a meditation class in the company of a few, but treasured souls. Although my body tends to be unforgiving and the seated pose sometimes causes great pain, I’m learning better to be with the pain and observe it. For a while, I even shared an ancestral memory of sitting with the Buddha under the bodhi tree, and had a glimpse of the enlightenment he experienced. I know this enlightenment is everyone’s birthright, and I feel patient waiting for it to burst open within my soul.

I continue to find interactions with certain people in my life confounding, and while this causes some of the hurt at my core, I find it easier to feel compassion – for those who have unwittingly disappointed me – and for myself and the feelings of hurt. I learn to observe them and let them go. It’s not easy, and it takes repeated practice, but I realize that as my expectations and needs of others lead to disappointment, so too, do I unwittingly disappoint others.

This world encourages, as Kabat-Zinn’s book title suggested “Full Catastrophe Living”. We rush around, losing our sense of connection and community in the “monkey mind” sphere of to-do lists, achievements, comparisons, and inevitable failures. Meditation gives one the courage to slow down, to blur that riot of activity into something more comprehensible, where we see that much of our own suffering is a result of western living.

When I think on some of my greatest times of suffering in life, those sufferings were often compounded as a result of rushing. That time in 1996 when I fell and broke my arm, shortly after my divorce and the death of my father come to mind. I was rushing for a train, and tripped on the most imperceptible rise in the cracks between the pavement. How much extra suffering would we save ourselves if we slowed down a little?

That’s not to say that vigorous action is bad. There are times when quick action can save others and save ourselves. However, there are times when moving slowly, pausing to observe and honour our feelings with compassion is preferable to pushing those feelings down and letting them erode us from the inside. It takes time and faith to heal, and courage to forgive.

Take time to slow down, to forgive others, and most importantly, forgive yourself first.

Blessings,

Jane

Older Entries

Day 38-41 of … Shame

Day 37 of … Compassion for my Younger Self #2

Day 32 of … The Dreaming

Day 31 of … 4am

Day 30 of … Reaching Out

Day 27 of … Contraction

Day 26 of … Facing Fire

Day 24 of … Creation

Day 23 of … Balance

Day 21 of … Courage to Slow Down

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