AN INTERLUDE con't: Jan-Feb, 2007


Journal #3 – January 9, 2007

CHRISTMAS IN THE ZEN HUT:
Christmas came to za zen hut on the morning of November 28th.  When I had gone to bed the night of the 27th, I left the blinds on the front window up, so I could see the beauty immediately upon waking in the morning.  We had had several days of snow, cold temperatures, and pristine beauty.  The woods to the south of the cabin were a wonder.  With about a foot of snow, every branch was laden to the very tops of the huge firs… great mounds.  The maples and arbutus, which have such long horizontal stretching trunks and branches, held the snow like long shelves.

I woke about 7:30am and with the futon bed/couch facing the window I simply gazed out the window at the beauty.  Very gradually the light began to change.  I wondered, at first, if I was making it up… there was a pink tinge, I thought.  No.  It was not imagination.  Suddenly the forest was pink!  The sun, of course, was on the rise.  The pink became deeper and deeper until a tinge of yellow came in, so an amazing range of colour from soft pink to brilliant red to yellow and orange.

Then the ‘lights’ came on.  It was, as if, the whole forest was strung with Christmas lights even into the lower branches there were bright lights within the trees.  Again, I had to wonder.  The tips of the great trees were alight with a blazing yellow orange, of course, the sun was shining directly onto the tree tops of snow, but, what brought that brilliant burst of coloured lights down to the lowest branches deep in the forest?  Slowly, it dawned on me… the forest is on a slope.  The sunlit tips of the trees on the lower slopes were shining through the nearer branches; and hitting the snow mounds at various spots.  It was a spectacle of Christmas trees, dozens of them.

Amazing how difficult it is, after the first few moments, to watch such a stunning show.  One wants to shout, or run out into it, to capture it somehow… or even turn away.  In all, it lasted about 20 minutes before the sun was too high in the sky to catch the mounds of snow encrusting the tips of the lower trees.  It did remind me of Christmas as a kid with all the presents under the tree before one.  Then…  within 20 minutes or so all the wrappings were off and it was done… the magic gone.

So magic came again this year… without gifts even!  Most unexpected.  Christmas trees don’t’ usually do it for me anymore, but these Christmas trees took my breath away.  Always thankful.

A family Christmas happened too.  Caroline came on December 22nd and we had a perfect few days of chatting, walking and eating.  We made a lovely borscht on the 23rd.  Mom was unable to attend her other daughter’s (Barri) for Christmas dinner.  It is hard to watch her becoming ‘less’ (and hard for her too).  She acknowledged that it is the hardest time of her life.  Barri’s dinner was delicious with salmon wrapped in filo pastry, potatoes au gratin, and succulent, fresh asparagus.

We have had storm after storm since the snows.  The winds and rain have been fierce, sometimes to hurricane force with tree limbs (many 6 feet long; 3 inches in diameter), which were broken or weakened by he snow being flung about, often slapping against the hut.  I was out for a walk yesterday… by the Orange Blossom stables.  As well as the large limbs strewn about, several great trees were felled.  It is always odd to find an upended fir over 20 feet in length, with it’s tip pinned in earth, and it’s broken trunk high in the air…  and not be able to find its base.  How far did it catapult?  As I write, we have both brilliant sun and a great wind.  What a world we live in!

Journal #4 – February 13, 2007

‘THE CHICKEN COOP’:
The Chicken Coop. That! is what the meditation hut is called.  It is perched on a steep bank up by the road, and surrounded by mighty fir trees.  You approach it by walking along a little winding path; and the sign at the beginning of the path says “The Chicken Coop – Welcome”.  Yes, in fact, it was a chicken coop.

Fred renovated the chicken coop five years ago.  Janet had opened her house to those who wanted to come for meditation; and it came to pass that a dedicated space would be more conducive.  (Claudio, the meditation teacher, does individual practice sessions so a private space was helpful.) 

Fred did a beautiful job.  There is a nice sized entry space with bookshelves, followed by a meditation space with room for about a dozen people.  There is also a sun deck that looks south over the gardens, for sitting outside in the summers.  He put in large windows looking south through the forest onto the gardens, and sliding glass doors looking east into the forest.  It is a lovely light and open space, which brings the outside in.  The walls and ceiling are white, and the trim is light varnished pine.  It is a very pleasant place ‘to sit’.  There is grey carpeting throughout, with a Persian rug in the center of the meditation area where there is a small center table with a candle; and there are 3 large pictures of the universe on the back roadside wall (no windows on this side).  Seating is provided by the proverbial white plastic garden chair… actually quite comfortable given the cushions and blankets provided.

Yes, it amuses me that I am meditating in a chicken coop.  When we sit in the mornings, I can even hear chickens clucking! No not ghosts… on the next-door property there is a chicken coop with live chickens.  The chicken motif is strong.  Someone who comes for meditation on Friday evenings brings organic eggs from her farm to sell to us.  Somehow it all fits!  Of course, ‘the egg’ is also a symbol of ‘the Self’ from the Jungian perspective. 

I am reminded that my first 3-day training session for my Masters in Counseling Psychology degree (1977), had us doing a guided fantasy where we chose 3 animals: 1 to represent ourselves; 1 to represent our friend; and 1 our enemy.  What did I choose to represent myself, but a hen!  I was a little brown hen pecking away with hectic rapidity in the barnyard (friend was a dog; enemy was a parrot).  This fantasy was actually to manifest about 10 years later.  On the first Mother’s Day following my move out to the country in Ladner, there arrived in the morning a female dog and a rooster.  I kid you not… they just arrived at the back door, together!  I have laughed many times. (I note that the sexes of the animals were reversed.  Perhaps I too was in role reversal, given my management position and thus the tendency to exert male attributes.  Very Jungian!  I also note, I was very pleased when my sister’s parrot, named Paula, flew away… about the same time as I had become aware of my mindlessness.  This parrot (already named, I might add) was both acquired and lost within the first year of my Master’s program.)  The fact that the arrival of chicken and dog happened on a Mother’s Day seemed synchronistic even then, now there seems an even deeper significance as I have begun  ‘to sit’ in “The Chicken Coop”.  (Like dreams, some synchronicities take years to reveal their layers.)

Perhaps I am making too much of these details, but for someone with a Jungian influence they are hard to ignore.  It seems to me that “The Chicken Coop” (since it harbours chickens) is also a strong mothering or nurturing symbol.   I note that it is Janet who has nurtured this ‘chicken coop’ into existence.  The specific method of meditation is relatively new, and is not particularly of interest to a great many.  There is no religion, no beliefs or philosophy to be learned; there is just the process of  ‘sitting’ which naturally unveils ‘the Self’ or Consciousness.  

I also note that during the turn of the century and up to approximately the 1950’s both Carl Jung in Switzerland and Ramana Maharshi in India spoke of the ‘natural’ process of becoming the Self… of that which is beyond ego.  Jung researched this phenomenon through observing its unfolding in his own life, as well as, in his client’s therapy; and Ramana, after his enlightenment, outlined a new meditation technique called ‘Self Enquiry’ where one simply asks, “Who am I?”  He was very young when enlightenment struck, there had been no time to become religious or learn philosophy.  He was living proof of the natural process. 

It is still early days for this new step in human development to be integrated into the Western culture.  Maybe it never will be?  The rigorous simplicity is not sexy.  Already, at the Ramana Maharshi Ashram, the ritual and memory of the sage have taken over; already in Jungian Analysis, the power of the archetypal takes the focus.  Ritual devotion and the analysis of the archetypal at play, all have their place.  They are simply not the meat of the matter.  Add to this the fierce politics in both arenas and there is the usual mess.  One can see the need for nurturance.

So! hens… mothers… women… and their nurturing something new and vulnerable.  I cannot but note these intertwining themes in my own life and happenings.  There is the fact of my Huguenot family history and also my coming to know of the 4th century saint, St. Paula, during my analysis.  These are two remarkable stories of women nurturing a new spiritual phenomenon.  The stories tell of women inviting people into their homes to be introduced to a new spiritual adventure:  Protestantism in 17th century France; and Christianity in 4th century Rome.  The meaning of ‘huguenot’ is ‘meeting house’.   Many of the educated French women during the late 1600’s, started having gatherings in their manor house to learn about Protestantism. With St. Paula, it was St. Jerome who would come in from the desert ‘to sit’ with the Roman women St. Paula invited to her home.  And now it is Janet who has invited people into her home ‘to sit’ and use a new, very simple form of meditation:  Just sit and let Silence be the teacher.

Another synchronicity was my connecting with Claudio, the meditation teacher*.  I did not get to know Claudio here in Victoria; I got to know him at the Ramana Maharshi Ashram in India.  He sat quietly for a month.  He did not take on the rituals, or get involved in the complicated hierarchy of personalities and politics.  He just sat.  He also recognized, without being told, the only saintly person in the Ashram… a very humble non-assuming, non-charismatic person.  I was impressed by his astuteness.  Then… I had to stay near Victoria this year, and here I am in ‘The Chicken Coop”, with Claudio… and Janet.

‘Just Sitting’… Love to you all, Paula

*So why the teacher??  You have no idea how easy it is to forget that one is to just! sit.  So many questions arise… a few examples in my next missive. 

Around About February 28, 2007

THE MINUTIAE OF RETREAT LIFE:
This is the third week of our 6-week Intensive Retreat; and the sixth month of my personal retreat.  Days start around 8am… the usual morning routine; 10am – 1pm meditation; 1pm lunch (major meal) and some of the domestics required… maybe a bit of a rest or a read; 3pm a tidy of the meditation hut and raking of the path, followed by a walk, a catch-up on e-mails, or a shop; 5pm a light dinner; 6 – 9pm meditation; 9pm a bit of a read and to bed about 10am.  Finally, I have found the perfect life!

Obviously, I like meditation.  What in the world can you do for 3 hours with your eyes closed?  To begin with I focus on relaxing the body, hoping this will help relax the mind into slowness if not silence.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  Often, at the beginning, the mind is still in its busy/worry mode.  Amazing! It can worry about what it finds inside, as well as what it finds on the outside, in the day to day.  Key understanding: the mind is most often not needed for the kind of detailed thinking it was developed to do, instead it just gets caught up with its’ useless criticizing or worrying.  Amazing what trouble it causes!

What is inside to worry about? Lots!  What you hear … thoughts, observations, your own voice, silence; What you see… images from life’s experiences, fantasy, memories, light (blue, white/grey, colour?) or blackness; What you feel … physical needs… an ache or pain or two, emotional responses to what is ‘seen’, relaxation, waves of energy, a numinous state (bliss, love, joy), a sense of expansion/no boundaries, a total emptiness/fullness.  Things come.  Things go.  All happens in the greater space/Consciousness.  This is an intuitive knowing, but also something one learns as one sits.

If one ‘just sits’, things slow down.  Silence may emerge.  I remind myself to keep my attention focused… on the 3rd eye; on Awareness; on the ‘still point’ within.  It matters not… even if the focus wavers for a time I learn there is always a presence.  I find that I simply am.  There I rest as often as possible.

Even when I began meditating early in the year 2000, I realized that I could use the mind to focus on the wave of energy that got released as things started to slow, and that this focus helped slow the mind generally.  Some time early on in meditating, I also heard that one could focus on the breath.  I found that I just had to watch 3 slow breaths, and then that wave of energy would come over me and I would become very still.  Being still, I could then very easily ‘watch’ my thoughts, and not get consumed by them.  Through this process things would actually slow down so that for an hour or more, I could be without thoughts… frontal lobe thoughts.  I might get an observation from the occipital lobe region; or a floating thought from god knows where, but these too would usually get quiet.

I was very proud that I found meditation so easy.  This should have been a clue.  I had heard that things get very subtle, that the ego can get very tricky.  Vigilance must be a constant.

What I didn’t realize was that I was often ‘parenting’ my thoughts, very subtly.  If the mind became busy after a while, I sort of just stared the thoughts down.  “Enough”, I would say (internally) focusing intensely on the spaciousness.  Anyone in the Marlatt family knows about the ‘Marlatt’ stare… children get immediately quiet.  I had been well trained to control myself.  I was so well trained by my childhood experience; I didn’t even know I was controlling myself… not just focusing.

One day I noticed that my tongue and vocal chords seemed to be operating… literally muscularly active, producing words.  In fact I was silently babbling.  I had never had to contend with this before, at least, not in meditation.  I was horrified, so much for silence.  Next meditation was OK… whew, just a fluke I thought.

Then I was out walking, attention on the silence, as much as possible.  All of a sudden I realized I was babbling (internally) again.  This time the voice was very distinctive.   (No, not psychotic.  The voice box was muscularly active.)  What totally caught me off guard was the sound of the voice… it was, as if, it was the comedian ‘Lily Tomlin” doing her ‘telephone operator’ impersonation. She was in full swing!  I was not pleased!  I always thought she was terribly tacky.  The voice carried on in a stream… a story was being told.  I could not help but listen.  I was blown away:  It was the story of ‘Robin Hood’ being told as a parody of my life! 

“Maid Marion… she’s gone! gone! gone! you know.  Always the maiden weren’t you! Yes, yes, the mother’s name…. you were always competing with your mother for your father’s attention.  Weren’t you!  AND always Very! GOOD! weren’t you?! Or so you believed.  Then there is Robin and the boys in the woods… boys, boys, boys.  Do you get that??  THAT would be Rod (husband #2) and his merry band (all the other affairs in your life); and, of course, there was Prince John (husband #1)”.

On it went.  Very funny, in true Lily Tomlin style.  (Sorry, ‘the voice’ doesn’t really come through in this rendition.)

Having attempted to control my thoughts (as opposed to just focusing attention and just sit), I had forced unconscious thoughts to come forward in another way.   Not just thoughts, but a full-blown complex.  A learning:  Go gently!  Don’t use force.  The good news was that I knew what it was like to simply let the attention focus, and could now ‘just sit’, which is what I had been told all along.  The by-words for meditation are ‘fresh’ ‘light’, and ‘enlivening’.  If I had really been paying attention, I would have noticed that my silence (when parenting my thoughts) was not really fresh… there had been dullness present.

So I go on.  As the mind’s activities become less important to me, I find energy naturally drops from the head to the heart, so less energy for thoughts.  The chest vibrates with energy instead of the head.  Slowly, I learn that Consciousness cannot be directed.  I think I have a sense of this, just fresh clear, space that is amazingly familiar:  “Perhaps I don’t???”  Aughhh… “Just sit,” I remind myself.  “Quit worrying!” It is all very natural:  It is a natural human developmental process.  (How many times will I have to remind myself? … Would this be another! worry?)

WHYYY??? I do ask this often (worrying once again).  I review everything:  What do I want?  What things, places, people… what is important to me ‘to do’ in life?  I have found that what is necessary to be done is obvious during a day, so goals have pretty much disappeared.  My answer to these questions is that I have pretty much ‘done it’… I am quite satisfied with things as they are.  What is most important when I look forward, is to know that I will be meditating.  Generally, ‘things’ have begun to ‘land in the field of Awareness’ and not occlude or pull my attention with thoughts, dreams or emotions.  It simply is not a constant.  Life is richer, sweeter.  I will keep meditating.  It seems to make a difference.

I am often reminded that my inclination toward the spiritual is not new.  In the first year of married life in the spring of 1967, I read the “LOOK” magazine article on the “Beatles with the Maharishi”.  It was so compelling I almost walked out the door of our apartment, to go to the Maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh, India.  The pull was amazingly strong (I didn’t sleep for 3 nights, and eventually thought I might die from this strange energy.  Later I would understand that this intuition was about the death of the ego, not my life.)  I didn’t go… my father-in-law was coming for a visit that week.  In 1987, the pull was to Osho (Rashneesh) in Poone, India.  Again, I didn’t go… I got married for the second time.  This has been coming for a long time.

It is now April…
The Intensive Retreat finished March 15th.  Events have come roaring back to take front and center stage:  I went to see Caroline perform on March 17th (the first time since she broke her foot last summer); doctor’s appointments were set for mom the next week; and a dentist appointment for me.  Then… mom went into hospital with a bronchial infection March 23rd.  She is still there.

She has been in hospital 3 weeks now.  She is very weak.  We are talking about her death.  She says, “My life has been so easy; this is so hard!”  The gift during this time is that we often say, “I love you!”  Her expression is more naïve:  She looks directly into my eyes, her eyes wide open.  Though her memory is very short (2 min.); though her mind cannot take in much (she doesn’t know why she is in hospital); though she gets angry (acting out quite badly) as she grieves her coming death and “No Smoking”; though she can be incredibly demanding with any of her caregivers… a never ending list of needs to be met … there is a freshness with her love.  I am very glad I decided to be here to be with her during this time.

Who knows what next winter will bring?  Thanks so much for being at the other end!  Love Paula

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