forward march (or may)

loopy told me a very corny joke on May 4. "It's Star Wars day," she said. Of course, I said, "What?" and she said, "May the fourth be with you." Uuuuugggghhhh.

Reminds me of how my grandmother and mother always used to call the fourth of March "moving day." You know. "March forth." Aaaaaaaarrrrrgh.

Anyway.

Here is the photo that's been my wallpaper on my phone for two weeks.


I took it on my way to meditation two weeks ago, crying near-hysterically cuz my meds hadn't kicked in and stoned on my meds cuz i hadn't eaten. Still, when I saw this (in some ways unremarkable) image, it somehow got through to me.

I took the pic and put it on my phone to remind me to look forward instead of backward... it would be easy to get mired in cherished memories and drown in them (as I have been for months, to the detriment of myself and others). The future is scary and hard to deal with at the moment.

But the past is not coming back, no matter what the future holds, and dwelling in it "robs [me] of the present moment," to quote one of the teachings I've heard. I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Here is one of the teachings that's been sustaining me:

Each day, we're given many opportunities to open up or shut down. The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can't handle whatever is happening. It's too much. It's gone too far....

Basically, disappointment, embarrassment, and all these places where we just cannot feel good, are a sort of death.... Rather than realizing that it takes death for there to be birth, we just fight against the fear of death.

How do we work with our minds when we meet our match? Rather than indulge or reject our experience, we can somehow let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we're feeling, pierce us to the heart. This is easier said than done, but it's a noble way to live. It's definitely the path of compassion—the path of cultivating human bravery and kind-heartedness.

~Pema Chödrön

This is a hard teaching, but I've been working with it a lot. Facing the present instead of running away and hiding.... when I can do this, it does seem to deepen both my moment-to-moment connection to the world; it also helps me experience my feelings and then let them go.

And sometimes when I'm present I can accept unexpected gifts, like these beautiful clouds gathering over a car dealership as I hurried to a Chinese restaurant last night:



The world is full of richness and beauty, if I can only slow down and breathe and see and feel, and not be afraid of any of those things. Especially that whole feeling thing. Dangit.

One foot in front of the other.