Monkey mind had me in its grip tonight but meditation quickly calmed the screaming beast inside. (photo from Unsplash)
I found myself ruminating about an upcoming stressful event, and getting more and more physically uncomfortable, feeling flushed and short of breath, anxious, shaky, even angry–all from my thoughts alone. I am grateful I’ve been practicing meditation for years, and recognized a good opportunity to use this skill to calm myself. I lay down and played a 24-minute recorded meditation by B. Alan Wallace called “A Tour of Shamatha Practices,” which focuses the mind on the breath. In no time, my breath calmed, my mind calmed, and I let go of unskillful thoughts and projections. I certainly don’t know what the future will bring: why waste precious time fretting over it? It could as easily go well as poorly, and the attitude I bring to it will largely determine how stressful, unpleasant, or comfortable it will be for me. I’m grateful meditation restored mental balance tonight, and grateful I had the presence of mind to turn to it instead of letting monkey mind ruin my evening.
Using up the last of the dog-pill ham on a sandwich with Havarti, mayo, mustard, and homemade bread & butter pickles, along with the last of the squash soup. I’m grateful to have enough to eat, and to recognize my good fortune rather than take it for granted.
I’m grateful for the simple pleasures of favorite things, like the chartreuse blanket Deb gave me years ago, the hori hori garden knife from Lee Valley that Garden Buddy noticed the other day, double dark chocolate Milano cookies, Zoom cooking with Amy, year round Christmas lights, a hot shower, bees on flowers, happy shows, the Raggedy Ann doll I’ve had for sixty years, a camera phone in my pocket, and a cheese sandwich with plenty of mayonnaise. It’s great to be grateful for these tangible things, and important not to look to them alone for happiness. I’m also grateful for a “life of the mind,” and for meditation and other skills to train that mind; for knowledge and wisdom acquired through years of choices, mistakes, and unintended outcomes, along with deeply satisfying results sometimes, like this house I live in. I’m grateful for new ideas and experiences, for old friends, and for a heart that keeps on ticking.
Opportunity knocked, and I opened the door. I accepted the invitation to create an online Introduction to Mindfulness course for a large group of educators. It will be a cursory overview, a tip of the tip of the iceberg, that may entice people to try meditation and some basic mindfulness practices. My hope is that it will give teachers who opt to take it a glimpse of the possibilities that meditation and mindfulness practice offer to find mental and emotional balance in a complicated and stressful work environment. During this pandemic educators, like health workers, face increasing anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout due to short-staffing, higher workload, traumatized students, and conservative pushback against the science of masks and vaccines.
Mindfulness changed my life. I’m grateful for the opportunity I stumbled upon early in the pandemic to learn simple and effective skills to manage my own anxiety, fear, and depression, and transform my life into one of gratitude and contentment. I’m grateful for a decade of meditation practice, a year of intense mindfulness training, and the opportunity to teach these skills online, helping people explore their own potential for less mental suffering and more genuine happiness. I’m grateful for the decades of adventure I’ve had exploring fun, creative, interesting, and varied ways of making a living; for all the lessons, influences, and conditions that led me to discover my true calling and right livelihood at long last. I’m grateful for opportunities to share the gifts of meditation and mindfulness with this new custom course for Oregon educators; and with anyone who is interested in a more thorough exploration, through the Mindful Life Program’s Foundations Course offered online quarterly, with the next class starting in January.
Today I’m grateful for every living moment of this day. Not for the first time, I’m grateful to have woken up alive, with a soft cat stretched out beside me, after a pretty good night of sleep with not too much pain. I’m grateful for the fullness of this day with sunshine, coffee, meditation, conversation, introspection, a cheese sandwich, ice cream, entertainment, meaningful work, and a sense of belonging. And that’s just the beginning. And now the day is over, I’m tired in a healthy way, and I’m grateful for a bed in which to rest my sleepy head. I’m grateful to have been aware of all these things in the moment, grateful to be a conscious participant in my own life. It’s that simple.
I’m grateful that I found mindfulness practice. The world we inhabit is complex and often confounding. Learning a few simple skills, starting with meditation, has helped me find more joy and contentment in life, and experience less mental and emotional suffering. I still get frustrated, annoyed, jealous, suspicious–just, not so much as I used to, and those afflictive states don’t last as long. I still hurt. In fact, I’m going through a pretty tough time right now, I won’t deny it. Sometimes I feel so empty it aches. But not all the time, and other times I feel profound gratitude just to be alive. To be able to share the skills and benefits of mind training with others, as I did this afternoon, is icing on the cake. Today, among other things and people, I’m grateful for the students in the Mindfulness Foundations Course I’m teaching now, and those I’ve taught before: when they tell me how the lessons and practices have helped them handle a challenging situation, or find more peace of mind or happiness, my heart sings. So even though I’m sad today, a week after Stellar’s death, I’m also happy. I’m grateful for all my teachers through the years, and for my constantly deepening understanding of life’s endless lessons.
I looked up rattlesnake pole beans. I had assumed, like many of the references, that their name derives from their purple-speckled skin, but I found one article that mentioned it comes from their propensity to wind themselves around the supports or their own vines like a snake. And then I found this one! I’ve picked quite a few that were twisted around the fence wire, or their own coiling stems, though mostly they hang straight down. I’m grateful that my curiosity about their provenance led me to find out this tidbit, and then find a perfect example of it.
I’m grateful, as always, for Stellar Stardog Son of Sundog. He spent a lot of time outside lying on his bed in the shade under the deck, which is kind of unusual. Something seems to be turning in him. His back end was as weak throughout the day as I’ve ever seen it, maybe the worst consistently. Maybe he’ll rebound again, and maybe this is a new normal, or the beginning of the end. I’m so grateful for this bonus year we’ve gotten to spend together, and for all the good days he’s had. I’m grateful for the curls of his ruff, and the way he sees me.
Another thing I’m grateful for today is that the prep for a colonoscopy has improved a lot since the last time I got one twelve years ago. This doctor at Delta County Memorial Hospital offers her own recipe, which includes a super sour sickly sweet 10 ounces of magnesium citrate–I chose grape, because lemon-lime is intolerable from past experience, and cherry is just icky no matter what. That went down ok. Then she has you add 238 grams (8.3 oz.) of Miralax powder to a gallon of Gatorade, your choice just not red or purple. I chose orange because for a few years in my younger days, I really liked orange Gatorade, in the context of a hangover cure: that, and a bag of salty potato chips, brought me right back into my body on the too-frequent mornings after.
This prep was far more mild than I’d expected, though the first few cups of it bounced right back up all at once. I hope I managed to keep enough of it down to do the trick. Yeah, it’s gross to think about, but a) it’s apparently important that we get this done from time to time, and b) the whole time I was drinking this two-weeks’ worth of laxative, I was watching the news of Haiti and Afghanistan, and I felt really lucky. Also, I set my mind ahead of time to engage in the process as if it were a meditation, committed to just being present in the midst and flow of it, observing my bodily sensations, being grateful for the effects, and optimistic for the outcome. Bringing a kind curiosity to the process has been a huge help in managing legitimate anxiety: An old friend did her first screening colonoscopy at 50 like they tell us to do, and they nicked her colon, and she died of sepsis.
“That’s exceptionally rare,” I’ve been told by many people. And yet it happens, and why would it not happen to me? I am not invincible, though my childish mind insists that I’ll always come home from whatever outing I undertake. This amazing human capacity for denial: It can’t happen here, it won’t happen to me, etc. Silly denial; and yet, the reality can be terrifying. Death is certain, time of death uncertain. I’m ready to face the music tomorrow, when I’ll be grateful for my chauffeurs Rosie and Deb, and pray that I come back home to Stellar, Topaz, Biko, and the glorious garden, unscathed and healthy.
I’m grateful the new little dog down the road has finally accepted me.
I’ve been so tired today. I’m so tired now. Some days are just like this. There were crazy drivers on the road this morning, and this afternoon. A large calf was running loose on the highway as I drove home from a Delta doctor appointment (all is well) with all the US50 detour traffic; and a huge flatbed truck that shouldn’t have been allowed on our little road came within an inch of scraping me into the ditch at the hairpin curve. For all the mindfulness training, I was frazzled when I got home, and I slept for three hours after lunch. Ever since I woke up I’ve thought of nothing but more sleep. Ok, that’s hyperbole, but it’s all I’m thinking about now.
I am so grateful that I am usually able to sleep through the night once I go to bed. I know so many people who can’t: who either just wake up way too early or wake up multiple times a night to pee, or can’t get to sleep for a long time, or never get to sleep. I’m grateful for sleep, for six, or seven, sometimes even eight hours of it, for the physical and mental restoration it bestows. I’m grateful I have a good bed in a sturdy house, and that I have the relative peace of mind to be able to close my eyes and rest my head and all the busyness within it for at least a good part of the night–and sometimes a good part of the day. I wish you good sleep. And if you have trouble sleeping, I suggest a Jennifer Piercy yoga nidra on Insight Timer to help you relax body and mind sufficiently to rest easy.
I used to drive across the country once or twice a year, for more than twenty years. I felt really confident in my driving, and in my ability to handle anything that came up. But in recent years, while I’m still confident in my driving abilities, I’m less sure of the skills and wisdom of other drivers; also, the pandemic sapped my desire to go anywhere anyway. So I practiced focusing on my breath several times this morning before heading out on the highway, just to keep myself grounded. Then at the hospital, I breathed intentionally to keep calm through the intake and waiting areas. I’m grateful for how well DCMH maintains their Covid protocol, and this time I sailed through the process to get to radiology.
An MRI itself used to make me feel claustrophobic, but the new machine is like a giant donut and much easier to breathe in. I chose classical music, which happened to be a dramatic symphony that meshed in a fascinating way with the sounds of the machine. At the same time, I focused on my breath, with an awareness of thoughts arising and falling away. I surrendered to the noise: It was a lovely meditation. I’m grateful I have learned the mindfulness skills to approach this potentially grueling outing with equanimity, and make the most of what had to be done. We’ll know more later about the outcome, and I’m not worried about it, expecting only to gain information.
Then after I got home and decontaminated with a hot shower (one of the things in life I am most grateful for! Imagine–clean water flowing from the mountains through pipes underground, into a holding tank, pumped via solar power into my home, pouring out hot in a fountain in my very own shower! Life doesn’t get any better), I sat outside on the patio for a long time, just breathing, recuperating the energy it took to sustain equanimity throughout the day. Then I chaired a zoom meeting, and later sat outside again for a long while with Stellar and some cervid friends, breathing with the rhythm of the phoebes’ flights to and from their nest overhead; punctuated with occasional hummingbird frenzies off to the side. I spent a good portion of the day just being grateful for each breath.
The Solitary One. This juniper grows unusually separate from others in a clearing in the woods. Right now it’s surrounded by a carpet of laughing yellow flowers, which don’t show up well in a color photo so I might as well share the more emotional black&white.
I’m grateful for so much today: for sunshine, green growing things, a breakfast burrito for dinner; a meaningful zoom with a talented, compassionate writer friend whose book I can’t wait to see published; new glasses, Stellar doing a little better today, the fragrance of white irises, letting go of my need to control everything; half a dozen hummingbirds zipping around the feeder outside the living room window while the phoebes tag team feeding their chicklets right above the hummingbird fray, and a Bullock’s oriole pops in brightly for a moment… and the list goes on. I started the day participating in a meditation on an open heart, welcoming the richness in each moment of this life, and managed to carry that feeling through a busy morning and a productive afternoon, with moments of grounded relaxation throughout the day. I’m so grateful for the practice of mindfulness, and the joy and contentment it’s brought to my life.
I’m grateful today for our countywide healthcare provider group, Delta Health. Today I visited both the hospital and the West Elk Clinic to get some tests run prior to an intake with a new primary care provider. It was a challenging trip for me. It was only the third time in the past year I’ve driven that far: I know realistically that the chances of a car crash are greater than the chance I’ll get Covid now that I’m vaccinated, but I managed to keep that anxiety at bay for the forty-five minute drive down there. At the hospital, I girded my loins, double-masked my face, and strolled bravely into the lobby.
Things have changed since the last time I was there. A new intake desk with a touchscreen checkin, wiped with disinfectant before and after each use, and a greeter taking temperatures with a wand to the neck. Everyone waiting in the main lobby both for admissions, and for wherever they were going next. I had grabbed a New Yorker from the mail pile in the car, and when I sat down to wait I opened it to a page of LL Bean’s menswear. Oh no! I had grabbed an LL Bean catalog, not The New Yorker! I flipped through the catalog, then opened Kindle on my phone and picked up where I left off months ago in The Compassionate Mind.
It was half an hour before I got into an admission office, and during that time I was dismayed to see several employees walking around half-masked; other people pulling their masks down to speak, and so many gapped masks. But I practiced patience, and felt safer being vaccinated, and reasoned that these people probably get screened daily and act cavalier because they know they’re Covid clean.
In the office, I was mesmerized as usual by the clerk’s fingernails. They were even longer this time. I’m always grateful when I get this lady, because her nail art distracts me. She seemed subdued, distracted, not her usual chirky self. She said, “Things are gonna get much worse.” The pandemic obviously getting to her. I really felt for her, and this helped me keep equanimity. I was stressed being there, but hey, I’m grateful I get to work from home. I felt for all of them. She sent me back to the lobby to wait for Radiology to come collect me. I wished her well. I felt that my being calm, pleasant, and expressing gratitude for her work gave her a lighter moment in her day.
Nail art from a previous visit. I was so mesmerized by her nails this time that I didn’t think to ask if I could get a picture. Also maybe by that time there was a little bit of static in my brain, which happens when I get anxious.
I changed seats a few times in the lobby, as people with droopy masks passed too close for comfort. Myself wore a ‘non-medical grade N95’ (whatever that means) that my cousin gave me, with a cloth mask over it. Time plodded on: I looked up every time someone came through the double doors from the main corridor. I started getting short of breath, and couldn’t bring myself to take a deep, full inhalation. It wasn’t the mask, it was the anxiety. Finally I walked back to the intake desk and said, “I’ve been waiting for Radiology for a long time, and I’m starting to feel anxious…” I was met with such a compassionate response I immediately felt better. One and then another attendant checked in the main office, and the second one explained that there had been some emergencies and they should be with me soon, and would I prefer to wait in the chapel by myself. That sounded good. As she was escorting me back there, the X-ray tech passed us and called out my name.
After waiting an hour, the X-rays took about ten minutes. I found myself holding my breath as the tech stood close and positioned me, thinking, If I can smell his breath (which wasn’t bad, just warm and moist and slightly scented) then he’s too close! I think I would have thought that anyway, even pre-Covid. The whole episode was a trial. I know that makes me sound like a weenie, but we all have different anxiety and risk thresholds. It’s been so long since I’ve been that close to that many people I felt a bit like an alien. Anyway, he escorted me back out to the corridor, and we parted with sincere well-wishes. This is a silver lining of Covid I’m grateful for: People really mean it when they wish you a good day, or to stay safe, or to take care.
Then I got to the clinic, and there was no order for the bloodwork. But the kind young lab tech spoke to the upcoming new doctor and got an order then and there, stuck the needle without sensation, got what she needed, and I was on my way home. I’m grateful for all the kindness that was shown to me during this adventure, and for the kindness I felt in my own heart, instead of the frustration, resentment, and irritation I might have felt had I still been an earlier version of me. I’m grateful that the fruits of daily mindfulness and meditation practice led me more or less serenely through the day, and allowed me to relax quickly after returning home, tossing all my clothes into the wash, and decontaminating in a hot shower. I’m grateful that my little blue car got me there and back safely, that Stellar was happy to see me when I got home, that hot water came out of the tap, that I had clean comfortable clothes to put on, and bread to make a grilled cheese-beans-and-bacon sandwich, and the rest of the day to enjoy this precious interconnected life.
