24 February, 2015

Sharing your Misery

Certainly, I like so many others… I suffer. Sure, I have real good excuse, a brain injury with a speech disability, combined with being gay. One of the problems, I had in the past was sharing my misery with others. Not completely wiped out, but with constant awareness I have managed to keep a handle on it. I think it has come a lot easier now that I finally married my partner of 13 years, and our long separation has ended. Frustration is a communicable disease. Also, if I get enough sleep, which us brain injured lucky winners need to have to keep the good parts working to their full advantage.

Sharing misery can slip out in even a casual greeting, first contact with others, and it doesn’t necessary have to be a vocalized action and come from not being present with others in a positive way. With my brain injury, if I am involved with anything else, from a simple door opening to signing in with a code, then any interruption is felt as interference to task at hand. Often people don’t know how severely this affects brain injured people, but my point in not to make another excuse. This is perhaps a way to doubly make sure to present a smiling face even when the brain is saying, “what’s this?” I figure if I re-condition the brain, whenever I am aware, by smiling, joking positively…or even stopping what I am doing to engage even when inconvenient or disruptive.

Many times in the past, I have shared my misery in a negative joking comment, never knowing I was leaving a black cloud around me thus creating more misery. I have often made fun of fake positive people to the point of stirring the “shit.” I, of course learned this, but that is not an excuse at my age. But, it may come to this extreme measure to change the brain. And it finally produced an example yesterday, when I spoke to a fellow yogi going to class who had never heard me speak. She was amazed I do what I do, because what she has seen or felt of me was always positive. I have also seen wisdom teachers who say that if we always see what is wrong with the world that we can’t change, we become more of the problem than the solution. We will also attract negative, more than positive people.
 

I am very fortunate to have a smiling partner who could see my intentions even when I was not always positive in nature. He inspires me to change, too by not allowing me to maintain any negativity.  Now a joke with us, as my moods, are fast to exit, because the mind-body knows that to maintain creates...yes, more misery. With my meditation too, I have seen what well-worn paths in the brain drive me to deviate from positive. “Don't go there, fool!,” I remind myself. In my case with aphasia, it may be doubly hard, but this never takes into consideration the many difficulties others face in their lives. Which leads me to compassion for others, while having compassion for one self. I want to experience a beautiful world, which in so many ways I have, and now want to share with others in a smiling, positive manner…even when it may seem fake, once in awhile to me.

02 February, 2015

A Near Death Re-Examination


It has many years since my near death experience, and it’s now going 12 years of a spiritual path of slow change and with this I have some insights. As I recalled in my first post on this blog, I now know it wasn’t really “me” who left my body: feeling no pain, sensing no worries, and no connection with my life in my body…it was my consciousness or awareness. That is why there was no pain and no memory of life connected to my body as it tried to merge into universal consciousness or love. This was the “light source” seen as a target to move towards, often feels like warm hands beckoning you closer to the light. So this gives me the idea that “we” will all meet again, in our awareness upon death, but without any of investment in our respective personalities. If I settle down a little more into awareness with daily practice, I can start letting go and the wisdom eases in my being, naturally. A little doing is involved in the form of bringing myself constantly back to awareness, when my personality/ego notices and makes a move to be seen. We know after a years in our personality we know where this leads us. Into past or future, two imaginary places far from presence.


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