As everyone knows my marriage has evolved into a new state of being. Neither my husband nor I were ever really ready for what it takes to be married AND be happy. I know for my part I looked to him for the happiness I craved. I looked for validation from him that I was a good person and worthy of his love. In our brief encounters with each other, I am finding that he also feels the same way. And we both agree that our marriage was not a mistake. What I have discovered in my journey (which will never end) is that the happiness we both craved was inside of ourselves. I used to be very pissed at Walter for saying I can't make you happy. To me it felt like a cop out, a way to get around showing me any affection. I can see now that he was right--though I may never tell him since it would go to his head--ha ha ha! But here's the thing I've learned or rather still learning.....we often look to others or bad habits to find the elusive happiness. The Constitution claims the pursuit of happiness as our inherent right. The counter-intuitive part is that happiness cannot be found until we stop looking for it. Weird, huh?
I've been reading and watching anything I can that has to do with what I call a clean mind clean body, meaning how to detox both my mind and body. Through CBT (cognitive behavioral training) I am learning that my thoughts really do become "things". A while back when I first discovered The Secret I thought that all that would be needed was a positive mindset, think happy get happy, think positive, get positive. While it is true is part, what I have since gathered is that if I don't clean the wheels of my mind they get gunked up with the negative BS like thick sludgy grease. The act of merely thinking positive is not enough to overcome years of negative self talk, and the false belief that I carried for others that I was not worthy. I'm pretty sure that we all do this is some way or another. It's almost hardwired into our brains to accept both good and bad as the only reality. Our brains are like our bodies.....we find a routine and then settle in to it. Better to be bored than have excitement which will only lead to catastrophe. Avoiding pain is the best course of action. When something bad happens to us, our brain validates that the event should teach us the lesson of being stagnate, bored, comfortable, etc. The brain says "see? I told you" and then begins to loop the sound track from childhood that we are not going to amount to anything anyway, or my boyfriend left me because I'm ugly or I won't ever be pretty enough to be a glamour or cover girl.....whatever is necessary to validate the negative crap and since our minds don't know the difference between real or fake it goes on autopilot and says it's all very much real!
We never stop to think, at least I didn't, that "this" was only a test. Had it been a real emergency....so we internalize the "lesson" which sometimes is a bad chess move on our part. The other day I had a huge argument with my 18 year old Aaron. We was pissed off that I had grounded him for 2 weeks for his nasty attitude. He felt that he had been severely "inconvenienced" by having to be home earlier than he wanted to, to help put groceries away that Walter was bringing in with him. He sat on the couch a fiddled and sighed heavily and loudly. By the time his day actually showed up he was thoroughly funky and everything around him screamed PISSED OFF. I grounded him because he was not taking time to be thankful that his dad was even bringing in food. I don't get my disability check until mid month and our fridge was scary empty. With each trip out to the car to gather more bags of food, his mood got worse and worse. When he refused to say thank you and instead complained that it was the "same old food he always gets", I grounded him. He missed out of helping his bud fix a motor to a boat and subsequently $60. Needless to say this only fueled his haterade. During the argument I realized that he was fighting like his dad which triggered an autopilot in me so much so that I called him Walter a few times. I used to hate when I was compared to either one of my parents, as most kids do, and here I was doing the same thing to my own son. As soon as I calmed my inner spirit, and realized that while he has the right to feel any way he wants to, some of the fragmented anger is not doing any one any good. I changed my spirit to one of loving kindness and listened to his intention not his words. Soon the whole chaotic atmosphere began to calm.
I'm telling you this? I could have spun out of control and undone all the good I was doing. I changed my spirit and my thoughts and gave us both the freedom to be angry and still be safe and loved.
Back to the tiny drop of rain......mindfulness is a consciousness, a decision I have to make every single day and sometimes multiple times throughout the day. For me, it is being present in the NOW and not dwelling on the past or planning a future. What is happening around me right NOW, is the sun shining? The wind blowing? Or is a gentle breeze? How does my mind and body feel in this NOW place? What am I most grateful for right NOW? It takes practice, learning to stop, lean over and sniff a rose, but the results are amazing! Just this morning I had my phone in the bathroom.....(don't judge ◔_◔) and my mindfulness bell chimed. I gazed through the window to see if I could see the birds I heard hanging out in the tree next to the window. What caught my eye instead was a cluster of clouds that had been pushed together by the gentle breeze into the shape of a heart. Have you seen Bruce Almighty? The part where he's sending signs to his girlfriend like two clouds kissing and merging into a heart...? That was what I saw....a perfect heart shaped cloud. I felt like a little kid who just got the best Christmas gift EVER! I cried and laughed at the same time! Later I hooked headphones to my laptop and began listening to some of my meditation music and the picture that loaded was a single leaf with one tiny drop of rain at the tip. That single drop holds a universe!When you stop to think about it, it has the power to create, nourish, and even end a life.Why bring this to your awareness? That rain drop is us. We stand at the tip of our lives every day deciding whether to drop to the ground beneath, dry in the sun, or stay on our leaf tip and just hang precariously while life around us goes on. What we decide is often a turning point not only in our lives but the lives around us as we are all connected. The question is do we connect to misery or to happiness and fulfillment? Our choice is the seed waiting on the ground for us to drop. That seed is the creation of our decisions (good or bad). How very Zen.
No comments:
Post a Comment