Coda

A new meditation

The last few days Cynthia has been in the hospital, and I didn't feel right about breaking off contact while she was there. As a mater of fact I was on my way out for Friday drinks when I stopped into see her - she had just gotten the shunt put in and was in incredible pain. It was good to be there for her and be supportive, but the aftermath was that I couldn't stop thinking about her and for the next couple days our timelines again were intertwined.

I was doing really well and all of a sudden I had a lot of work to do again, we resolved to have a clean break and this morning I awoke with a new meditation:

While breathing with my hands a centimeter off my body I moved them down from my eyes across my chest and abdomen down to my pelvis and then flicking out the energy from my body. When inhaling "this pain and joy" and while exhaling say these words "doesn't belong to me anymore"

So the whole thing in one movement was "This pain and joy, doesn't belong to me anymore"

The exercise is to acknowledge the dichotomy of pain, that with this intense joy comes it's shadow and that without light to counter act the pain you are suffer unnecessarily. Interacting with Cynthia was bringing pain to me and my family, I don't blame her for this as I forgiven myself - however to hang onto the the joyous memories and suffer their loss without replacing them with new memories is toxic.

Out of all the exercises I have written about this one is the only one that I feel working as you do it, I feel demonstrably better after having meditated. This is obviously a very aggressive meditation designed to pull out negative thoughts and can't be used in every situation. But one could try changing the phrases around to reflect other negative issues in the timeline.

For example, shithead co-worker could = "His insecurities and anger , don't belong here anymore" and push his garbage out of your head. I could see this working for a lot of things that pop up in life from time to time.

I think this is the last time that Cynthia is going to feature on this blog, I have to Thank her for being the catalyst that has started me thinking more about my place in the world. I still plan to write about how hard it is to stay focused in the maelstrom of day to day life, but not about how it started.

I hope that whomever reads this that you get some insight, no matter how small will make me happy. I mainly write this blog as a discipline to keep me honest and to keep my mind focused on momentousness, but if it helps someone along the way all the better.


Photo attribution: Geoffrey Emerson