Reflections

When I try to recall my old self, it appears like a reflection of who I so desperately wanted to be. A mash-up of societies pressure, advertising made clones as examples, and trauma escapism...a real fragmented version. I know, now that I could never be the person I am now without the hardships and the blessings. Who was I in the past if I wasn’t what I thought was the complete me? Well we all know that you can’t really love another until you love yourself and that is some of it. Not is some narcissistic way, but in a holistic balanced understanding of your self in relation to the world and others that often appears to be outside. So my first thought is that it may be directly connected to the subtle realization that one is not separate from the world or life in general. But I cannot downplay the positive effects of the “sonic birth” with the M.B.L. therapy. I have made some important changes with my 10-day Vipassana’s preparing myself to welcome personal growth through self-realizations in samadhi. This is along with a daily 1 hour meditation habit. This was important when I got to the wall in the process of M.B.L. allowing to break down and safely continue it until completion. 

I will go on my eighth Vipassana this Friday in two years. I know this will have more positive effects in my relationship especially with the dampening down of any expectations that are a result of my perceived needs that I may project on my partner. It will be a whirlwind of change for both of us when we marry, and I have to provide stability and ease for him when he starts the immigration process. He welcomes the change now, as he tires of the class distinction in Thailand. But we all know that his nature won’t fully change, and he still be himself at home in, to him, is a foreign country. The great thing is he not doing it for me, and for now sees it as an opportunity to be our own complete family given his troubled upbringing. 

Perhaps the reflection I see now is one of my natural compassion rising, not driven by fears and desires that were based in self-hatred. Anyway, a nice indication of my change was when my partner fell asleep in my lap today, feeling comfortable with the love I project, instead of feeling any demands.

A New Clearing

Enjoying the jet lag, combined with my dreams where one can't figure out where one starts and the other one ends. It was interesting for me bringing up a difficult time of the past, and feeling very resolved about it which in turn stimulated a dream of wonder and beauty merging several snippets of my past. I am writing this while my partner sleeps besides me, a gentle symbol of his relaxation that everything will be O.K. with our upcoming marriage and his new life, soon in USA.

Many years ago, I worked in advertising and our group formed a company within a company. I worked hard and long hours and was paid pretty well. It was kind of exciting if you could find a client let us do what we were good at, high concept smart and fun packaging and collateral. My mentor was an interesting man only 10 years my senior, and I thought we bonded. So, I put in a lot of hours, and weekends while having a partner at the time, who was aware of what was happening and said they are just using you up. It wasn't self-serving, but I just didn't listen deeply because we had other problems unrelated.   Since I was doing so well, I decided now was the time to buy a house. I had a small down from my father's early death the year before, and knowing that my job was never permanent I had better get in while I can. This is was a motivation to working so hard.  I looked near and far for the best for my money, adding a commute that was longer than my apt. Once I got my first place I needed more time to spend on fixing it up, since it was kind of raw. I began to leave work at what would be my normal quit time, and not work late nights all the time.

Earlier in the year at work we had a meeting about our little company, and was told we have retirement accruing separate from the main company. That was dangled over me to spur me to work long days and weekends. Well, you can pretty much guess that at about the time I took initiative to work more normal days, we lost a client and I got pulled in to be the sacrificial cow. It lost my job at a weak point when the economy was still struggling after an earthquake and normal malaise, which seems to follow most of my life. There was no retirement I found out, nor bonus for all the hard work, which added to the shock. Here I am struggling to pay a new mortgage, and slim jobs. There is much more to this story, but I will leave them out because it is not part of this signifiant release in my dreams.

Fast forward trying to recover from brain injury with speech being nearly non-existent and motor skills heavily compromised, I had a meeting with my ex-boss from that advertising job and he gave a few small gifts. I was still a bit pathetic, so I would see some interesting reactions. It was early on in my healing process and I was still steeped in anger as to "why me?" Plus, having lost my partner during this time I was raw and trying to find some of my old power. I wrote a letter to that old boss saying these little gifts are a far cry from the retirement promised to me. I wanted someone to blame and share my misery with and he just happened to be in the right place and right time.

I took off with an older female workmate to Mexico, to relax and heal after I wrote this letter. One evening on the beach, I broke down about what I was left with brain wise. A really good wailing cry with someone I felt I could trust. Looking back these were all things I had to experience to get them out of the way. Anger and despair need to be eliminated so that one could then settle on what you have at the present moment and cement that the past is totally gone. She had understood what were the issues that caused my break-up, and it was done to spare my partner my misery my first year back. It was never understood by him, because it removed him from a role he is used to of taking care of disabled adults. I just wasn’t going to give all my power up in a time of weakness. Some real purging that trip, and came back fresh and ready to get busy with speech. Upon returning, I was driving her car for the first time when I realized that I had so many deficits with my paralysis that left me unable to see to the right. So, I had her drive and we talked about a letter I received from my ex-boss because she worked with him at one time. I was so upset that he said in the letter, "I am not your father!" and didn’t quite understand how much my father factored in to so much of my misery. Also in his letter was a long-winded explanation about the supposed retirement. He had moved on but obviously I hadn’t.

I tore that letter up and threw it over the bridge we were driving over that day with my friend, but it stayed with me until last nights dream when it was all released.  I can’t do justice to how good this felt, but it spurred the next dream woven of past memories.

I went to the corner of a room to drink out of a water fountain. This was from when I was 17 working in an art gallery, which taught art classes in back and had this old water fountain with the handle coated in various colored paints from over the years. This alluded to all the artists in the gallery and were also the teaching staff. I am sure you know the kind of fountain that are square and about 3 ft tall with a stainless steel drain on top and a flip handle in the corner. Near a door opening which opened on to the galley. I saw a wide pictorial view like a wall had been blow out of the gallery that left the walls left and right. There were several artists trying to figure out an inventive way to close it up,  but because it was a beautiful beach, ocean, cloud view they did not want to totally close it up. The view was more or less from my recent trip to Sri Lanka(I’ll include a few in this post). The team had worked into the gallery wall a horizontal window strip top and bottom, so it looked like you could walk on water while seeing clouds above. No readers, I don't have Jesus complex. Then while taking a sip of water from that fountain and talking to the team, who had come up with a way to paint the wall using the same colors in my photograph, and their hands dipped in paint, cotton and sand to give the wall tactile mystery. I am sadly leaving out much more of the dream, but you know how detailed dreams ...seem to be. That is enough to know that what I held on for so many years about my father has been finally dusted in a dream of creativity through a clearing of my held-on traumas. This was the tail end of the fingers woven into my life.

My main point in telling you some of my past is to help others understand there is a natural process when anything really significant happens in your life. I had lost my brain, my house, my job and someone I still love all in the period of a couple of short years. One has to go through disbelief, anger, depression(although not a fan of basking in it), before you can get to acceptance and access your full healing potential. I would often have denial of the pain caused by others rejecting me when I spoke, only using it to spur on more personal work. My recent foray into M.B.L. helped to release any leftover traumas held in my body and helped to facilitate this latest release. This leaves me with less desire to escape by “doing something” to occupy the busy mind.

Do I Have to Speak?

Having gone through most of the M.B.L. therapy, removing most of the anger I have from a difficult childhood, now we were are working on improving my speech. This is still difficult with a fallen pallet and aphasia. The therapy moved my hearing to the right, which is closer and faster when it comes to speech, and I got some more mouth sensitivity. At the same time this therapy gave me more happiness, calmness and assertiveness. I combined the therapy with acupuncture and daily meditation to augment it. I am still not over the intense and exhausting dreams, but for the most part moved into the present. They do leave me waking up happy and resolved every day. Ear therapy to strengthen new connections we have made, means reading into my right hand close enough to bounce sound to the right ear. I am also listening to music with the right ear only when using any earphones, and talking on cell only in my right ear.  My speech leaves a lot to be desired, but is functional enough to get by. 

Now, I am faced with my own will after living with this for such a long time.  Of course, being on the short end of any conversation and constantly overlooked for what I have to say gives me a lot of fuel for contemplation about the true worthiness of speech. With real honesty I can say the only important thing I have said in my life is I Love You, with strong conviction.  Because I don’t say this unless it is fully felt, and acted upon. My family and my partner can be my witness and benefactors. With this in mind is more speech really worth my effort? I don’t need any obstacles in my path in the pursuit of wisdom and at times it seems to keep providing a detour. I have much progress in meditating which my M.B.L. therapist says is easy for me to take a route of non-speaking. And I am looking forward to a 20-day sit, to further enhance my awareness. I did say this was not an easy out for speaking, as Vipassana is not really easy and has provided me a lot of clarity and direction. So now I am faced with my own desire, and feel that I should do it mainly for others to speak better. With this I should work on truly embodying the words, “Thank You,” because our life is not our own doing. In the back of my mind I should focus on a goal that has been in the back of my mind to share my experience in life with others, that I discussed last March with a Sikh doctor I met on a train into Bangkok who was there, I found out later …to speak.

Universe Unfolding Its’ Plan

Having just gone through the sonic birth part of M.B.L., and the resulting exhausting dreams, unloading tons of past experiences… it becomes apparent that the way I got to this point was not really my own doing. I rode a landslide down a hill in one dream, almost like skiing on the rocks, landing upright with a huge boulder resting beside me…spurred to manifest because of a song I heard. People in the dream asked why I went that way, I said, “Because, I had to!”

Sure, we all would like to think in command of it all because of our ego-based consciousness, but it was what the universe had planned for me… even our birth. If you put aside all the strange things that lead me here, and how many hundreds of unrelated (we think) people are involved it was not a very direct path. Taking a helicopter view of my life, certainly, one could never have planned all this... in an effort to save my life. Now, I have to turn it around enough to help other people after they and the universe helped me. It has been a fun journey, if one doesn't take the hard parts personally and fully understand why you're still around. It feels like one is living in the Perplexus of life, the ball is constantly falling off the track, and you have to twist it and start again taking a different and more cautious route. In our pursuit of safety or what we think is known we are forgetting that we can out maneuver what the universe had planned for us.



I was talking with a friend about trying to take ownership of my latest venture, but knowing although it felt like it was the next smart move to find peace, I really did nothing but bump into the next thing. Perhaps, I was in the right place and time, possessing the correct mind space to accept what is present at this very moment. The universe had its’ plan and really all I have to do is just exist, as it will determine my course and even when I die. We falsely believe that we do things, but life lives us not the other way around.

When Dhamma is not Entertainment

When I first jumped off the complaining bus, and arrived at a local buddhist temple, I was captivated by the real job-holding dhamma teacher. It was a welcome change to hear something that before this time was all preconceived ideas. This dhamma teacher was normal, had kids and a wife and all the other assorted problems attached. How could I, as a single person(at that time), not get some great examples of where dhamma fits in daily life? Laughing while learning, being at first entertained. He led me and the sangha in meditation, then using simple analogy to weave dhamma and life's stuff that always seem to be directed at you. A quick intro, I won the pot 'o gold with a medical malpractice brain injury from a Dr. that exhausted his insurance, unbeknownst to me...leaving me disabled and dealing with questionable lawyers for 4 years.

Back to my temple, this male teacher taught one night a week, and slowly I graduated to two nights exposing me the other teachers talks. One suggested that this sangha is yours, and I began to help with set-up and clean-up. I met a few fellow sangha members, and each one had their own story and insights. Luckily, some were more experienced and helped me to dive deeper in simple understanding while working with them and others.

Then a new female teacher appeared, transferred from the East coast, who was a charming Brit, with a unique story of telling her Mom at a 3 that she would doing this, from a previous life experience. She was a simple, yet profound teacher, and one teaching I just knew her unspoken intention was to make dhamma clear to me. Perhaps, it might have been good timing or finally meditation was giving me small signs of awareness before unknown to me that prompted me to believe this, but “It” was working. She had a great personality, and a funny dhamma teaching husband to boot and both were liked by all. I began to more engaged in pujas, and longer weekend events there and away. And I was helping more around the temple, eventually helping to paint the entire building from her inspiration. I became friendly with an older member of the sangha, who's subtle teaching based on interest in my progress worked wonders in the after hours. We worked along each other setting up and taking down, and although 20 years older than I was tireless with her dedication to the practical aspects of dhamma. She was retired marriage counselor, so I think she used her wisdom from her practice on me.

In the first year of the "famous and loved" dhamma teacher appearance, she had to go to another temple far way to do her wonder work in the winter season for another temple. I didn't know in advance, so it was news to me. The temple would use new teachers, sometimes a bit green, until we found a new more seasoned dhamma teacher to fill in. I could sense my  disappointment, and low and behold, my comparing mind came in for a landing. After a couple of Tuesday nights, I continued my commitment to dhamma and helping out, but was still trying to judge the substitute teachers. When the older sangha member used to drive me home, I would talk with her, once complaining about the other subs and she got quiet, all while maintaining her smile. It then dawned on me that I was caught up in craving and aversion, because like most of us change is not a simple on-off switch. Sometimes, we need to steep in our errors, but that evening ride's talk helped. Dhamma was working it's little miracle with her subtle response, and she knew how to start the fire.

Growing from what is first perceived as an aversive, a teacher who might not be as entertaining as the one you like, and just watching the mind in the reactive state is dhamma in action. You can support the sangha instead of walking out because you are not satisfied.  One never knows if the new teacher will say something that will guide you further on the path. This simple awareness helped me grow tremendously with a little help from that older sangha member and by watching the mind in meditations. It made me realize Dhamma is not entertainment, it can be where you can grow in wisdom. I know now, that it was my first real sign that I was on the right path, many years ago and that awakening is a process of learning, and relearning until it becomes second nature.

It Happens, When It Happens

As I continue to peel away my past traumas in dreams and it meditation, I am also excitedly putting together my partner’s fiancé application. I am still shocked the law finally ruled in our favor based on my life’s experiences, confronting hatred and prejudice. I did not sit around and complain only these last 20+ years, I was still involved and out there. Facing things as they came up in work and life since 18. Perhaps, all this was in the cards when I first saw poor boys playing in a photo book on our family coffee as a young boy. This is one small piece that helped trigger my awareness of others and the world.

Could I be living a life that has already been laid out? I have told many people if I never had my near death and brain injury, I would have never be where I am today with less anger, more awareness and happiness. I really feel I would never get here even at this age, spiraling into disgust with life based on not feeling safe at home or out in the world. My “rebellion” was to find fault in everyone and the world, and graduating for me was doing in a form for a career, and socially in a sarcastic and funny way. Not to paint an entirely messed up life, there were some important people and events along the way allowing me to form relationships. A few people noted it, but nothing was eye-opening enough to totally shift course. 

The main thing that it has been awakening is my upcoming marriage feels like it is way less about me, and more about how to further make my partner’s dreams come true. Although when I bought my house it for the “two of us”, the other being my last relationship that fizzled under the strain of my near death and trying to figure out who I was, post injury. If I can step back whenever things get difficult with my current partner and see it from his eyes and see any displeasure as my expectations getting too grand. He will be coming from a foreign country, to an imaginary place he dreamt about, and this is my chance to see it all anew.  Luckily, he is sensible and we have already spoken about the fact that it may be hard to make it here, even with his masters, we’ve opted to perhaps sell and go somewhere else less expensive. I will try not to add any more burdens to his difficult life, just more opportunities to show my love through my letting go.  There is a great sigh of relief knowing if I die tomorrow he is provided for and I have at least helped one person. I feel I have turned my life around enough to make a difference and this provides a dampening of the whys of existence. We run around all over in ideas, desires and experiences with the hope to feel the contentedness underlying my existence right now. It doesn’t mean that I am free of problems and worries but they probably won’t be based on that old existential fear.

 

Going back to the laid out idea, why did I have a room full of religious paintings if I was not religious at all when I started? I would often say to people that I admired the unsigned paintings done in total devotion for any help they can give in this difficult human life. Not knowing it that it was really a sign that the ‘me’ has dissolved for them and I was nowhere near that when the paintings and I met first. Maybe I ought to attribute my collection as a collection of the ironies of life? Or they were just a time killer waiting for awareness to kick in?

What Won’t We Get Done?

Patiently sitting in the house of a stranger, it quickly becomes the familiar like the appearance of a slightly different movie set. It is your house in a different life or dream. You try not to interfere, but you know damn well it could be you in that bed, and these supposed strangers ...are your family. They are very considerate, you could feel their immense love for their friend and each other. The chanting was beautiful, halfway through profound wailing was heard and it took all my strength to remain calm and present with these emotions conveyed. I did not look or connect to see it who it was. I did not feel uneasy, only my heart was trying to reach out of my chest.


A man is dying...and his wife prepared the walk with flowers to greet the nuns with love when we arrived. In my head, I say this is beautiful, but private, so I stepped far away from their path. Suddenly the door opens and his wife bows to the nuns. I had asked earlier if I should stay in the car until they felt a need to have me enter, but they had no idea what was the status when we arrived. They were hoping my stroke experience would help him…just pure intention.

It really happened fast to him, and there was no time to plan. I won’t go into too many details out of respect. I walked outside to get some air and to pet the cats that had waited patiently near-by, sensing that something was up. A half hour later a man walked outside and we talked, me breaking the ice with an explanation why my voice was bad after I commented about the trees on the hill.  I asked, “Is that a tree house way up there?” I listened to what he had to say. “No, it is only the sky peaking through the trees.” Then easing into some of my story, because of his preplexed reaction to my voice. In the process, I reassured him that my near death left me with no fear and detailed the experience. The worries most of have about wanting more life in this body are only born out of the fear of the unknown.  I saw his red eyes clear up some and forehead relax knowing it what he heard was no bullshit. I encouraged him to meditate soon, to see what how we really think, and spend time alone with your mind. Without vocalizing it, I conveyed that difficult times are a catalyst for change. More fear will release naturally that you have been carrying around all these years. A good half-hour spent talking with total honesty, in a relaxed way.  Letting him lead where this conversation went.

It was time to leave, and talking with the nuns who I drove there, and unknown to me I was speaking to that family member who had cried earlier. My jaw dropped, that the same person who really needed my compassion had found it their own time in their own way. Instead of any kind of awkward, forced or fake sympathy I would have offered in the past…it just happened organically.

 

I knew I had to go to Mozart Brain Lab therapy and the puzzle that I was close to finishing was on my mind. It triggered something before arriving...We will always die with unfinished business.  So, I decided to stop it and just feel the emotions of this small symbol of death, right now. I would normally finish it, and look for some small sign of accomplishment... energetically. So this is not like me. As the session ended, which I did in meditation posture instead doing a puzzle or some other brain connection game and we moved to hearing chants to seal the therapy and relax the brain, I broke down. Not that it wasn't expected or embarrassing. I wanted to wail, but tried to keep it down, with the others clients in other rooms out of respect. Some was what remains in my body from my life experience and it can be expected. Could be that experience earlier, helped to access the things that need to come out. It was combined with a very frank discussion by a close surgeon friend, during the previous night’s dinner, talking about his clients generally to me about death. In a moment of silence and with complete honesty said, “No one really dies peaceful... unless I say, ‘good-night’ alluding to seeing them in the morning and then they pass with relaxation. This is why I think it is always about others, making them happy,” with a furrowed brow.