tonglen

image credit ... lauris naglins

i got calls from two of my dear friends today and both seemed to be swept up in a storm of harsh self-judgement. they did not sound at all happy and they seemed a bit untethered.

 the first was describing his inability to get out of bed some days and has been feeling lost and disconnected for some time. i honestly think i could sense the hidden anger over the phone. i offered the idea of a medication and a provider which he had been considering. i also insisted he try to incorporate some loving-kindness into his day. the idea of loving-kindness can be the most challenging to give to ourselves. this is an awareness i have much personal experience. and it continues to baffle me some days.


so i asked him to breathe in loving-kindness for himself with each in breath. on the out breath he could offer loving kindness to the rest of the world who suffered as he did today. i don't know if he engaged in it, but i felt sure it moved his understanding of his situation a little. or at least i hope so.


then another friend called and began to unravel some thoughts she was having about her life on this holiday. she had gone into the field to visit someone before court tomorrow and was about to write up a report. she was lamenting about her untidy home, her inability to keep track of everything, and her imperfections were laid out like hot coals she was forcing herself to walk across.


i reminded her that she is far from faulted. she is a single mother of 2 boys, works full time, has a house, was a caretaker for her ailing uncle, sponsors newbies, and still makes time to criticize herself. i offered her the idea of loving-kindness as well. it seemed so apropos. maybe she could take a walk and breathe in some loving kindness for herself, and then breathe out loving kindness for the rest of the world that was suffering as she was today.


tonglen- the practice of giving and receiving is a practice of balance that has found its way into my life's toolbelt. somehow it always reminds me that i am not as alone as i think i am. giving is always a gift and receiving becomes more of one each time. today was a shining example of this. it was a good day.

Suggestions for the Practice of Tonglen
reprinted from naljorprisondharmaservice

Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your
personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.

In Tonglen practice, through our compassion, we take on (embrace without resistance) the various sufferings of all beings: their fear, hurt, frustration, pain, anger, guilt, bitterness, loneliness, doubt, rage, and so forth. In return, we give them our loving-kindness, happiness, peace of mind, well-being, healing, and fulfillment.

1) Sit quietly, calm the mind, and center yourself. Reflect on the immense suffering that all beings everywhere experience. Allow their suffering to open your heart and awaken your compassion. You may also choose to invoke the presence of all the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and enlightened beings, so that through their inspiration and blessing, compassion may be born in your heart. In this way, you are resting in bodhicitta—the enlightened nature of the mind. Bodhicitta, is an inexhaustible source of purity, generosity, and compassion.

2) Imagine in front of you, as clearly as possible, someone you care for who is suffering. Although this may be more challenging, you may also imagine someone you feel indifferent toward, someone you consider to be an enemy, or those who have hurt you or others. Open yourself to this person's suffering. Allow yourself to feel connected with him or her, aware of their difficulties, pain, and distress. Then, as you feel your heart opening in compassion toward the person, imagine that all of his or her suffering comes out and gathers itself into a mass of hot, black, grimy smoke.

3) Now, visualize breathing in this mass of black smoke, seeing it dissolve into the very core of your self-grasping (ego) at your heart center. There in your heart, it completely destroys all traces of fear and selfishness (self-cherishing) and purifies all of your negative karma.

4) Imagine, now that your fear, self-centeredness and negative karma has been completely destroyed, your enlightened heart (bodhicitta) is fully revealed. As you breathe out, imagine you are sending out the radiance of loving-kindness, compassion, peace, happiness, and well-being to this person. See this brilliant radiance purifying all of their negative karma. Send out any feelings that encourage healing, relaxation, and openness.

5) Continue this "giving and receiving" with each breath for as long as you wish. At the end of your practice, generate a firm inner conviction that this person has been freed of suffering and negative karma and is filled with peace, happiness and well-being. You may also wish to dedicate the merit and virtue of your practice to the benefit of all sentient beings.

so long so long

image credit... nick knight

i first met laura when i was doing advocacy for a small community based organization in aurora named "itav". laura was a sex worker and smoking a lot of crack. i drove over to her boyfriend's apartment in west denver and brought her to the agency so she could go to a women's group, get something to eat, and get away from her life for a minute. i remember very well the conversations we had in the car on the ride to and from.

fast forward to 2 years ago when i ran into her again. she had now become the house manager for a program for plwa's in athmar park. she had slowed way down on the crack use and had gotten into medical care-even consistently taking haart medication. she was much more grounded and again we talked often and repeatedly about the direction of her life. she was with her boyfriend who was intermittently quite abusive. it appeared he had a mental health issue and refused to take medication reliably. when he would drink alcohol or use cocaine, his mean streak would especially arise and her physical injury rate would escalate.

shortly after i ran into her again, the two of them had a volatile altercation and he picked up a tv and threw it at her, breaking her leg and some of her spirit at the same time. because of her position at the housing program, a police report was filed and chargers were drawn. he ended up spending about 10 months in jail being released sometime late last fall. 

naturally, what followed were conversations around self-care and responsibility to the residents under her watch. she started to smoke crack more frequently, smoke pot more frequently, and engage in some other odd behaviors. but she was able to reel in it for the most part. many of the residents that she looked after had their own serious life issues going on and i will never really know if she was able to truly present for them because of her own internal drama. but certainly this is how it is with almost everyone. i somehow always felt that she was lost in a current that taking her somewhere quite a distance from here. but i also understood that she was doing much better than when i first met her, so harm reduction rules the day.

this morning i heard the first report of a small tragic story unfolding in the small neighborhood that she lived and worked. as the day unfolded, it became somewhat clearer that there was just a continuation of this same story. i have been both saddened and numbed most of the day. i wish i could have done more.

the following is from the local paper..

Police are investigating after a woman was killed last night at group living facility in the 2400 block of W. Wesley Avenue in Denver.
Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson said officers called to the scene at 2:20 this morning found a woman dead of knife or stab wounds. Her identity was not released.
Neighbor Anita Rich said that around 2 a.m. a man who she knows only as Carlos came pounding on her door and screaming.
"He was saying, '...she's dead, she's not waking up,'" Rich recalled this morning. She said Carlos, who lives in the group home, was in a panic.
They went across the street to the single-story group living home, while Carlos called 911, Rich said.
"She was laying in the hall," Rich said. "There was blood everywhere."
Rich knew the woman only by her first name.
Rich took the phone from Carlos so she could talk to the paramedics.
"What do I do? How can I help her?" Rich said she remembers thinking.
Paramedics told her to put on gloves before doing anything, which she did.
Rich said she checked for a pulse and found one. She didn't see any visible wounds, but said there was a lot of blood.
Emergency workers showed up a short time later and took over from Rich.
The coroner's office and crime scene investigators were on the scene this morning.
Jackson said a suspect has not been identfied.

 written by kieran nicholson and reprinted from www.thedenverpost.com

so damn happy

image credit...Huub Onzia Derdeyn

       

Stage II™ Recovery

Stage I is about arresting the addiction or surviving the crisis. Stage II™ Recovery, which Earnie created in 1985, is about understanding the triggers and imprinting that left us vulnerable in the face of substitutes. Whether the process of trying those substitutes is called co-dependency, shame based living, adult child syndrome or any other label.

Stage II™ Recovery requires discipline, practice, and the ability to refuse to let the past rob you of your present. Choosing this new, healthy road isn't as easy as it sounds. The assumption is that you know and recognize the difference between the past and the present. Often this is not the case at all. Not recognizing the difference between yesterday and today can mean less choice and freedom in your life.

Stage II™ Recovery answers will seldom be found in Stage I recovery groups. They have different focuses, and that's okay. Keep in mind, one stage is not better than another. There can be no Stage II if Stage I has not been won. Recovery does not end with sobriety.

this is the intro description from  from earnie larsen's site. i think it reflects some insight that is required to really understand ourselves. i am damn sure i did not possess that insight early in my sobriety. i am not sure am in touch with this afore described self-knowledge. i am still working on this.

but i am very aware that i have gained volumes of understanding how i operate in the world in the years with no substances. i have gained and lost faith and reunited with it again. i have remembered my frailties and stumbled painfully beside them. i have found strength i really had no idea i possessed. i have lost all sight of being able to stay connected on the earth. and i have forgiven myself, many others i know for not living up to my expectations. and i have raised the bar on what might be possible in my life. i have learned to share my joy and i have learned to say "enough" and "no thank you". and i have started on the path of belief.

i have had an epiphany this weekend. i have realized that i learned to be taken advantage of, used, and joked about publicly was something i experienced before the 5th grade. it became something i have been recreating over and over and over infinitum. because i got loaded so often, it never occurred to me that there might be such a pattern in my life. the new twist is that this is a pattern- not an isolated incident. it is a one-two-three act play that has been handstitched onto the cover of of my story.

and even after i got sober, i hadn't a clue that such a pattern could even exist in my psyche. but these last few years have revealed not only an existence, but a thriving terrarium holding my head and heart hostage for most of my life and stealing the nutrients that nourish a healthy journey.

but today i have finally been blessed with the grace of some self-knowledge around this. no doubt it is too ingrained a pattern to simply disappear. frankly it will probably continue to sprout with unwelcome like the dandelions and thistles that speckle my lawn.  but at least now i have the option of side-stepping this life long habit of turning punk. i thank the universe for the quietly thunderous tectonic plate shift that sobriety has unveiled. truly amazing. so damn happy.

    

this n that

image credit... matthew welch

we have had almost a full week of rain and have been foretold of another week of the same. luckily, today  is full of blue skies. my lilacs are in full splendor and the hydrangeas and rose of sharon have begun to spread their wings. i just put out geraniums for the summer- red ones this year.

i am slowly realizing that all this crazy i have felt this last couple of years is not that unusual. i keep hearing others share about their insanity well into their sobriety. this is honestly reassuring. i am already feeling less crazy.

while working with a group on friday, we did an exercise which consisted of listed ten tiny changes that we want to make in our lives. and then we are to make one of those changes our homework. i have chosen mine and am restructuring balance.

i have helped begin a new process with hep-c testing at my workplace and am excited about it. we interface with more than 400 iv drug users daily and about 80 percent of those are infected and we get new folks weekly. so some prevention and linkage to care is in order.

 btw, the pricing of the new hep-c drugs coming down the pipeline seems completely outrageous. when i consider the quarterly profits for the pharma (and chevron for that matter) and compare them to the national deficit, i feel sickened. so many subsidies and so much lobbying from those profits. no doubt the boards of directors are patriotic americans who are supporting the office of the president to the best of their abilities.

colin farrell in a remake of "fright night"? ... i am so there...

the reunion of justin timberlake and andy samberg (dick in a box) was worth the wait. i am still laughing about snl's lovely gift.

waiting for the rapture