Post 9 - HO, HO, HO...HERE WE GO

The days of another holiday season are quickly melting away.  For me it begins with Black Friday and ends January 2nd.  For those 38 days I am consumed with planning, gift buying, scrambling to see family and friends, baking, cooking, decorating and craft making.  On top of the holiday activity there are also significant anniversaries and birthdays.  Lots of energy, time and money spent thinking about and executing creative holiday and celebratory moments.  I wake and retire each day with thoughts and ideas.  My mind races with my perceptions of others expectations, wants and needs.  Moreover, I strive to think beyond to achieving the element of surprise and elation.  How will my gifts be received?  Will I succeed in my goal of creating happiness for my family and friends?

If I could only stop the holiday train and get off for just a moment I might see something truly amazing.  A gift that requires no driving, line sitting or credit cards.  A gift that is available to all no matter what age, financial means or belief system.  A gift truly from the heart and filled with Love.  Perhaps if I took a moment I could see that the best gift I could give is the gift of me. 

In my haste to buy the perfect gift, plan the perfect event, create the perfect holiday experience for my family I forget that it is me, my presence, my attention, my Love that my family really craves.  So if I'm spending 38 days running here, there and everywhere physically, mentally and emotionally trying to make this holiday season perfect and memorable, but I lose sight of the ultimate gift I have to give then are all of those efforts for naught?

Certainly my family celebrates Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries with presents, events, family gatherings and all of the things I think about daily during this time of year...those things create tradition, lasting memories and add value to all of our lives.  Do I have the wherewithal to give my family and friends both?  Can I give all of myself and also give the tradition? 

I am not sure I can answer that objectively.  Surely I can replay the past few days and the events of this holiday season to date and present them with a positive perspective to confirm that I, indeed, am capable of achieving it all.  After all, that is really how I see it.  But it's not about what I see or feel.  It's about how I am perceived by my family and friends.  Do they feel my presence physically and mentally, or do they see only the stress that sometimes weighs on my being, and the malaise I described in previous posts?  Do they see joy emanating from my actions, or do they see me rushing and forcing my way through holiday tasks?  Questions worth asking them and answers worth considering each and every year as I find myself caught up in the hustle bustle of this season.

Post 8 - THE FORCES OF REALITY

I am, for the most part, a believer in logic, reason and science.  It only makes sense (to me) that every being on earth and beyond came into existence as a result of some sort of scientific evolutionary process.  Molecules exist as a reaction to some event.  They come together in varying states to form living and non-living things.  Molecules co-exist and react with and because of each other. 

However, all that being true (at least in my perception), there are also things I find unexplainable through scientific analysis.  I have seen evidence of what I would consider mystical happenings and miraculous changes in fate.  I have spent time in prayer and had my prayers answered.  I have personally had experiences that suggest there is more than science contributing to our experiences and the occurrence of events.  I believe I have witnessed specific evidence of non-scientific forces at work.

The best example I have of this is the events of my dad's illness and eventual passing last year.  He was diagnosed with sinus and later brain cancer, underwent numerous and radical surgeries and hospitalizations during the three months he suffered with the disease.   During one of the hospitalizations he coded and required emergency resuscitation due to a problem with his tracheotomy.  Luckily the doctors brought him back.  After recovering from the ordeal, he conveyed details of a vision where he floated throughout the hospital.  He provided a description of the waiting room, which he had never been in, and named everyone he knew who was in that room or elsewhere in the hospital while he was gone.  The facts he provided could not have come from his own recollection or knowledge.  How can that be explained by science?

As my dad's condition worsened, and he was in his last moments, all of his loved ones came to his bedside.  I had to work that day so I was delayed in arriving to the hospital.  When I arrived my sister directed me to the room, indicating that there wasn't much time left.  I entered the room, filled with extended family and friends, hugged my mom...and just as I did that we all witnessed my dad take his last and final breath.  You can call it a coincidence, but I don't believe that...I believe my dad, once again, was present in that room in another form and willed his body to hold on until all of us were there.  Nobody can explain medically how a body can survive when it should otherwise have expired...except to say that there is a force driving the process which is removed from scientific explanation. 

I suppose it can be said that all of this is simply my perception of reality, and that my specific, molecular and physiological make-up causes chemical reactions that dictate this interpretation of my experiences.  Believers of this explanation would extend that theory to my dad's near-death experience.


How do any of us really KNOW the truth about what is driving our individual and collective experiences?  I don't think this is something that any of us are meant to know.  Perhaps the answer is not a definitive answer at all, but rather a continuum of multi-dimensional thoughts and possibilities.   

Post 7 - THIS NOISE IS DEAFENING

For the past week I have been feeling off and haven't quite been able to put my finger on what is causing it, or exactly what the feeling is.  I just know that I feel flat, unable to focus and disinterested in things that normally would bring me joy.  Is it money worries, relationship woes, my job, missing my dad who passed away, stress of the holidays and upcoming events?  One of those things alone could cause this feeling, but I can't say that it's truly any of those things or a combination of them.  Am I suffering from some sort of depression?  Perhaps.

Finally this morning it hit me...NOISE...there is so much noise in my life.  I'm not speaking only of audible noise, but also noise in my head.  I feel like I am at a heavy metal concert every waking hour.  My thoughts consist of short bursts of must dos, schedules, and should do more of.  At any given moment my brain is holding all of the information that allows me to function as a mom, as a wife, as a professional woman and as an individual.  The details of those roles are vast.  On top of what's going on in my head, physically I hear my husband and kids making verbal demands, the dogs barking, the baby crying, music...I see a messy house, a disastrous yard, a disorganized office, mounting debt...I  am on overload. 

I've begun to forget simple things - words, names, numbers, grocery items, where my keys are.  This week I drove to work forgetting that the baby was sleeping in the back of the car.  Luckily I remembered while I was en route.  It's scary and I feel as if I'm losing my mind...losing the edge and wit I once had.  I find it hard to concentrate and focus at work.  I feel dazed most of the time.  Is there something wrong with me, or is it just the noise?   What am I doing wrong and why can't I manage the noise?  It's not unlike noise I've encountered before in my life.  Others are able to function under graver circumstances.  Or are they?   Maybe other people just don't complain as much about it, or deny it's there, or maybe other people are better able to quiet the noise.     

I know this didn't happen due to lack of attention to my spiritual self, which I find sometimes to be the culprit for bad feelings.  In fact, I've been studying Evolutionary Enlightenment by Andrew Cohen and War of the Worldviews:  Science vs. Spirituality by  Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow.  Some very interesting perspectives in both of those books.  I feel connected to concepts from all three of these visionaries. 

Cohen speaks directly to what I am currently experiencing in that he explains how we can use meditation to quiet noise and attain a state of awareness void of time, void of noise and void of everything.  He describes this as a state of nothingness, but blissful nothingness.  I am drawn to the possibility of experiencing that state, but intimidated by the art of meditation.  I attempt meditation during the few opportunities I have to attend Quaker meeting on a Sunday morning.  There have been those instances where I feel I transcended the physical world sitting in the meetinghouse and lost time, lost myself in nothingness, but those were only very brief flashes.  I can also recall this experience during Savasana at the end of Yoga, but again very brief.  My noise always interrupts and pulls me back. 

During a conversation with a close friend one day, she described the phenomenon Cohen explains.  She told me that she spends hours hiking in the woods near her home.  While hiking she is able to attain this state of consciousness where time melts away and she feels a perfect joy.  Just speaking of the experience lightens up her face and she shines from the inside out.  She is almost brought to tears simply sharing the experience.  I didn't really appreciate the gift she was giving me at the time I had the conversation with her, but after reading Cohen I now know how incredibly fortunate she is to have achieved such perfect meditation.  I am now in awe of her gift. 

So I'm thinking that one way I could attempt to quiet the noise is to practice meditation.  But when, where, how?  My house is chaos...I have no time to myself...what if I fail?  What if I can't meditate and just frustrate myself further?  I need to resolve these fears and try it...