Weights a little lighter

My thanks to those of you who checked in with me after my last post. Krissy sent me this useful article. I do need to cut back on something of the voluntary things I do for others. Also, since the list on paper thing isn't quite working for me anymore, I'm going to try one of the online to-do and prioritization tools. I'm going to give toodledo.com a try. This is partly because I like the printable booklet they offer for your "hotlist." Of course, the things I like about it are available if I upgrade to Pro, but that is only $15.00 a year. I'll use it for a week or so, and if I like it, I will.

If any of you reading this decide to subscribe, please do so from this link, then I get a freebie for a few months.

There was another issue lurking underneath, and it did reveal itself. Here's what I said in email to Krissy the next day:

After I wrote that last night, this morning I woke up with a dream where I'm in my grandma's house. She's alive, but me, my mom, and mom's husband are taking care of her and we are also sorting through her things because she is also dead. My thought this morning was that I still need to do some grieving, so of course I'm over-emotional.

I also thought about her house being the center of my inner landscape. It has always remained pretty much the same in real life, and it has always been a place of refuge. Now the stuff is sorted and sold and the house is being sold, and maybe my foundation is being shaken in a way I didn't expect.

I feel better today, not so depressed.

I've been using tv to escape. I need to cut back and cut it out. It sucks time too.

That was Thursday. Since then I've felt less inclined to escape via TV, and my despondent mood has lifted. Friday morning I had another inner landscape dream...one of those places that re-occurs and grows and reflects my changing psyche. I dreamt I was at college, but unlike many past dreams in which the buildings have grown like a hive and I'm returning to school to continue my learning, it was more like I was there to collaborate with others, and I seem to recall there was something to do with a fundraising sale. The spiritual me was meeting up with the learning me, and some kind of shift happened. It was more like I was taking my place not as a learner, but as a do-er.

Speaking of the learning me, something that needs to go lower on the priority list are my continuing blogs on Pema Chodron's No Time to Lose. Teaching related to my despondency is certainly found in Chapter 7, and I knew so as I read it. G talks in the class about needing to find enthusiasm in the translation itself to make the work come alive. The one I am linking to, perhaps more scholarly, not so down-to-earth. She said, "Refusing to look at problems does not make them go away." That is just why I posted what I did. I hoped that if I voiced it, some answers would come, and that is what did happen. She went on to say that this refusal to look leads to despondency. "It is the very thing that makes things worse."

And I say the antidote to despondency is to look at it straight on, as I did with my spiraling emotions. A gentle questioning, "What is this?" allowed a door to open in that wall that was keeping me from acting and keeping me procrastinating. I will write more on this when I get back to the blogging on the book.

I feel loads lighter, and I was again able to have that questing mind, and look for ways in which I could handle all the tasks that I need to accomplish. The nice thing about toodledo, I can use Jott to send myself items to do. Toodledo provides helpful info on accomplishing projects and goals. One aspect of all this weighing on my mind is that there are so many little things I need to do. Worry about remembering them makes me anxious. Toodledo gives me permission to forget. If I send a message as I think of something, I can forget right away.

Just Ahead, or Behind the Tide

I've been so busy, it hardly seems like two weeks since I returned from Wisconsin. Tomorrow (today) is my brother's birthday. I need to remember to call him.

Lemme see, what have I been up to? I'll work backwards:

I've been exploring del.icio.us. I'm giving it a try after sampling and rejecting it a couple or a few years ago. I didn't think I needed yet another web tool to suck me into exploring more of the web. I gave it a try because an MCL librarian convinced me it could be quite useful for managing bookmarks, better then those clunky Favorites folders. i thought of those dusty old links on my computer....yep....i just usually re-find them using Google. and then i thought of my bloglines feeds, and how i have over 100 saved blog posts just in my 'books' folder. So I signed up, especially since I could get started on work time.

You see, my library has begun a Library 2.0 learning program, and all employees are encouraged to work through the activities designed to give us a taste of web 2.0 tools. Our director even used YouTube to broadcast her introduction to the program for us. (I'm not going to link to that one...if you really want to see it you can work for it...it's not hard to find.)

I will be quite familiar with some of that stuff, such as this blogging thingy, and flickr, but there will be some things I haven't been of a mind to explore. I'll share some of the posts I do there, here.

Yesterday I woke up with a dream that I saw my first husband at the mall movie theater. I greeted him, friendly, "Hey, Jimmy, what are you doing here in Portland?!" He seemed pleased to find me, and it appeared that was why he was there, but then he was only interested in finding this other seat in the theater and petulant over having to pause to talk to me. He looked the same as I remember, and I was eager to get a chance to talk and catch up, but after his first greeting he wouldn't settle to talk.

The day before I woke up with a dream that I was in a group at the Zen Center, my teacher Kyogen included, and we were trying out a new sutra/song to chant for services. We were doing it with a catchy beat, drums and bells, and it was the Song of Milarepa. Awake, I knew I was getting yet another dream from myself telling me to WAKE UP and practice meditation already. Is that a thing, Song of Milarepa? Lemme look it up. OK, from what dim recesses of my brain did that come from? I knew there's a Tibetan figure called Milarepa, but I did not consciously remember Songs of Milarepa, nor have I studied them. Now what, I wonder, would be the Song of Milarepa?

I digress with dreams. I took a civil service test on Friday, trying for that promotion to Library Assistant. The competition is fierce (but genteel). 23 (or is it 26?) people qualified for these exams. There are currently 3 positions that need to be filled, and we will be hired based on our score on the written exam and the oral interview. It's been 4 years since they did this thing, and this new hire list will last only a year. The opportunities are slim. If I get the promotion, I won't gain much money through this at first, but to do reference all the time would be quite enjoyable. Eventually I would earn more money, because while I won't get any more pay raises as a clerk, I would as a library assistant. I've been a clerk for 10 years; I've topped out on the pay increases. So...to prepare I've been subbing as an LA, studying training materials, and making sure I knew where to look for obscure things. My oral interview is at the end of the month.

Thursday our new sofa and bed from IKEA were delivered. Steve and I moved the couch to his bachelor pad, and I took apart the old bed (not as easy as it sounds) and cleaned the bedroom in preparation. The delivery came later in the day than expected, so I put the sofa together, Steve came home, and we both put the bed together. It was a very long day, and quite a workout. But within two days my back felt completely better. I've had back pain for months, maybe over a year. Ah, the new bed is the trick. I travelled by Max to IKEA on Tuesday to order it and set up delivery. We ordered the new sofa before Christmas. They had a sale: we got a gift card for 20 percent of the cost of that, and this, our new chair. I used the gift card to pay for most of the new bed.

Oh oh, the fun stuff. Last night I went to a friend's 40th birthday party. She had us play the game where we guess our identity by asking other party-goers questions about who we were. (Sticker with name on your back, yes-or-no questions.) She has 3 kids, and she wanted to get wild because it was the first time they were not there and she was having a party. There was much sexual innuendo among all, especially as the levels descended in the bottles of rum. (But oh so innocent, I could so corrupt her if she wanted...)

And over a week ago I got to attend the world premier of the home movie of the scientists in Antarctica, doing their scientist things like taking radar and gps readings of ice movement or loss or some such thing. We saw sped-up video of camp setup, and Tina walking around and around doing the very important business of keeping warm while she waited the 15 minutes for the equipment to do its stuff. They dig a hole in the ice for their open-air porta-potty. Someone joked about scientists a thousand years from now taking ice samples. It's not yet, but at some point when it's public I can share the link. Here's a little memento of her stay:

Dreaming of You

You are comfortable here with the fire crackling and your chores done. He is seated in front of the fire relaxing, perhaps he has some port or some whiskey or some apple wine. Somebody knocks on the door. You are startled and are startled anew at the fire. It sparkles and snaps with anticipation. They came! You look at him, would he please get the door?

You are not decent, you are only wearing your underclothes. He is also, but a man in his long underwear can acceptably answer the door. You remove yourself to the back room behind the great stone fireplace. You worry that he'd rather not answer the door and you'd like to have him be most comfortable. Is it the case that all men are most relaxed at home, alone (you don't count, you are a part of him), partly undressed? You worry that the peaceful spell has been broken, and you can't give that back to him.

But they are here! They didn't know if they would make it or not, the trip was long and the children young. The children glow as if they'd just stepped out another door and not traveled for hours. You happily greet them and their parents. The man sports a mustache, still brown. She barely registers, gathering the children, hands on shoulder, presenting them. You and the three children meet eyes, feeling that bond of friendship that almost excludes their mom and dad. You wonder if your old friends know this and if it would bother them. You are unconcerned, you and the children know of the magic you can create together.

You look out the window and see tufts of foam roll in from the ocean, blown up like froth from a lager. At least you think it is that at first, but the puffy drifts gather volume and you realize it has always been snow. You have not heeded the silent outdoors, and the dim grey sky has obscured the falling flakes. You make plans with the children to explore the snow while the other three adults catch up on the city's news. You know he will give them food and drink and he will be gracious and hide his discomfort.

On awakening you ponder the open floor plan around the fireplace, and you fancy the notion that this came from the past. Or could this dream be a story asking to be written? The feeling of contentment mixed with the edge of danger from the elements lingers in your body. You can feel her (you) asking to be remembered, don't forget, invite her into being. These two, did they build this house? Have they reached out to you from the timeless fire and stones to give you a glimpse of their love? You get a glimpse of the core separateness preferred by the man, and the inherent togetherness felt by the woman.

Find Me

On the plane to New York, I read Rosie O'Donnell's book Find Me. I'm still watching The View because of her, and am addicted to reading her blog. How'd she get to be so wise? I had to know.

In this book, Rosie talks about believing things happen for a reason, and how sometimes she just knows things. Other times, not as deep, but profound, she has spingles. Spine tingles. When she recognizes those significant times, she feels compelled to follow up. In Find Me she tells of an obsessive quest to help a young woman. She recognizes a certain narcissism in wanting to be a superhero, sometimes to the detriment of her own family.

All the while reading this, I found myself thinking, but of course you're a bodhisattva! I found myself composing the short emails to her blog, thinking if it was meant to be, she would find me among the thousands of other messages. How I would tell her a bodhisattva is an enlightened codependent. She says several times in the book that she is not easy to love, with this obsessive superhero complex. I have to wonder though, if that has changed, or really, what her love Kelli would say to that.

Here I was travelling to New York on the basis of one of those spingle moments, thinking that if this man and I met for a reason, I was going to find out. I couldn't turn away, I had to investigate, and here I was reading about someone else's ability to obsess, turn it over into greater understanding, and come through it with a meaningful friendship. I hoped I would too.

Last Sunday I met two of my best friends for lunch. We'd all missed each other this summer, since my work on Sundays kept me away from our rendezvous. My homie asked me how my New York trip was. "A mixed bag." I managed to say it without a quaver. I wasn't quite ready to talk about it I thought.

But my homie wasn't going to let me get away with that. I told her about the confusion and hurt when he said he'd meet me, but wouldn't show up. About the constipation when the toilet wouldn't work and I had to put the brakes on my emotions. My other friend advised kindness for myself. I told them about reaching the understanding that if I chose to be angry and bitter it would make me a smaller person, stunted, but that if I chose to keep my heart open to love I could continue to expand my self, embrace love, love all. All three of us teared up in the noisy restaurant, a small bubble of intimacy among strangers. I was glad my friends could understand that was my kindness to myself. We laughed over my starting out wanting to tell them of the 'good things' like the musical "Wicked" and the erotica reading and the Museum of Natural History, but that the 'bad things' turned out actually to be the 'good things' of the trip.

Yesterday I talked to my homie again about a dream I had. I confessed that as I do with strong feelings, I'd been requesting my dreams to tell me what's up with this. Why did I persist? Why the strong connection? All that time, I could not remember my dreams. I haven't been sleeping well due to back pain and allergy issues. That night, I didn't ask that I could remember, but yesterday morning I had a long dream that I knew was significant. My friend is going through a profound transformation of her own right now, and I asked for her help with her wide open state of mind. Together we realized that

1. I put myself out there in the world as my real self, knowingly. Even if I felt like covering up, cleaning up that messy self, that way is closed to me. [I was walking in the mall in my bathrobe. I knew and didn't care. But then it occurred to me that I might be smelly and my robe dirty and I didn't want to bother others with that so I decided to buy some clothes to wear home. Too late the gates were pulled down on the stores, the mall was closing.]

2. I am making a practice of this love of all, seeing where it leads even with someone far away, but I didn't do that with my family. I got out of Wisconsin, away from my birth family. I had to. I'm sure I knew on some level that it might be easier to chase love far away than to chase love on my own childhood's doorstep, but I confessed to her I probably didn't want to know that. [In the dream I went from the mall in a giant pickup truck that is my brother's, and he is with me when I get to the hilly neighborhood with winding curvy streets. We come across a time traveller (I am a time traveller too) in the body of a dog, too late I realize my nephew Zac was time traveling too and the dog was trying to warn him. My brother and I turned to the dog, too late. Something happened to my nephew and he is dead, injury irreversible in time travel.]

My friend commented it was too bad I couldn't extend this practice of love closer to this home. I said I am, but that in this man's case the love found me and I couldn't turn away, that I have managed to walk that fine edge of remaining open to love but not falling head over heels into love. I was glad that made sense to her, and that she accepts that I am capable of both and many kinds of love.

I could and I do need to make greater effort to reach out to my nephews. That is a long distance love it has been too easy to take for granted, and I need to take care, at least as good a care as I do for this stranger in New York. I have not come out to my birth family as polyamorous and bisexual. In some ways, many ways, they are strangers to me. That was another lifetime, and my nephews grew up without me. It has been vital to me to be honest with a stranger who I would be sexual with, but it has not been vital to me to reveal this truth to my family. No need to shock my grandma, and probably not my mom. If I knew my nephews better, perhaps they need to know me better...something for me to think about.

Incidentally, in Find Me, Rosie transforms some deep scars regarding her mother's death through her obsessive superheroish love. Today on The View her best friend from the age of 3 said that what people might not know about Rosie is how generous Rosie is. When cohost Joy said, "The world does know," Jackie said, "No, you don't." Rosie shushed her. She doesn't want the world to know what a tremendous superhero giver she is. Another bodhisattva clue, I would say. She sees the selfishness in her love, as I do mine, but she keeps turning it over for the benefit of the world, as I try to do mine. She doesn't want the accolades for giving, she doesn't do it to feed her narcissist self.

Grandma turns 88

I woke up this morning with a dream that my grandma came to visit me and we were at the Oregon coast. A bus arrived, and my grandma realized there was an old friend on the bus, so this old friend (not someone I recognized, a black grandma type) got off the bus to talk to my grandma, and the bus driver pulled up to wait. I was concerned the bus had to go, but the bus driver nodded kindly and clearly indicated that there was no hurry, two grandmas catching up was more important.

I remembered on waking that it's my grandma's birthday, and she has lung cancer, so I wondered if this was a saying-goodbye sort of dream. I know she wants to see me again before she dies. Every time I talk to her on the phone, she asks when I'm coming to visit again.

Of course I called her today. My mom took her out to eat today, and my aunt took her out to eat yesterday. We talked some, and worried together some, about my cousin Tim. I won't pretend I'm close to him. He's a few years younger than me, and I remember the moment when I realized we just wouldn't grow up to have much in common. I think I was in high school, and we were having a conversation about things we liked to do. He liked to play war games and read about the history of the World Wars, specifically the weapons and vehicles of war. I couldn't understand the appeal of wars. Even then I carried the seeds of pacifism in me.

My cousin is a police officer, and is now a Major in the National Guard. My grandma was able to tell me this Friday he goes to train for a couple of weeks, then he goes to Saudi Arabia, then to Iraq. He has a little boy Alex, a little girl Gracie, and another baby on the way. Grandma tells me his wife Kristen is doing pretty well. She got really sick with the start of her first pregnancy, but this third one is not as bad. Tim hopes to be able to return for his baby's birth, but my grandma doesn't see how it's likely to happen. A couple or a few years ago he was sent to Afghanistan, and has been pleased, having a young family, that so far he hasn't been sent to Iraq. When I asked about the sore on his face that wouldn't heal (from Afghanistan), Grandma said she thought that was what kept him from having to go to Iraq, but she hasn't heard anything about that lately.

Grandma still does her laundry on Mondays, and still hangs them to dry on a clothesline outside. I think she has a small electric dryer but she never uses it. She prefers the feel and smell of clothes and sheets off the line. In the winter she hangs it all on lines in her basement. Today she told me she took a vacation, she's going to do her laundry tomorrow. Still, she sorted it today, because she "wants to get an early start."

The other thing on her mind is her roof. She has to get a new one. My brother and my uncle wanted her to get more than one estimate, but she doesn't want to deal with the aggravation. If she gets a decent estimate from the local guy, she's going to go with that, and I say why not? She needs to enjoy the life she has left. We chuckled in agreement.

Matter and Consciousness Part 3

Back in May 1996 I had a dream in which I was murdered, or at least that was the sense I woke up with. But it wasn't me, it was someone else I knew was me. The dying itself I couldn't remember.

I joked with my friends about it being a past life. They took the notion seriously. I wrote a short story based on this character from this dream, in a way I gave form to her being. She became Clara.

I've just looked back at the journal I wrote at this time.

May 31, 1996 I keep having this image from a dream from several days ago come into consciousness. I am in a house, bare floor boards, no furniture. Front door opens into a front room and other rooms branch off. Money has been stashed here from a heist or laundered money. Stacks and stacks. I have come here with others to pick up the money. Big, dangerous men, not ones you want to cross.

Now I see me/her. She is a wispy thing, blond hair, thin, dressed in a shifty thing like a night gown. Barely more than a child, she is more like the property of one of the men than a member of the gang. She participates fully yet like a frightened muskrat, fully expecting at any moment to be hit or hurt or killed.

A week later I went on sesshin. During this time in my life I was attending just about every one I could. I wrote in a journal throughout during rest and reflection periods. I was grappling with the feeling of separateness. "How can I ever be anything but self-contained? How can I feel the truth of not-two?" I became irritated by Gyokuko in sanzen, which is a very special container created between teacher, student, and ritual that allows the dharma to surface and flow freely. I felt she was treating me like a beginner. She said I needed to find the place in myself where I was truly OK. I thought I had. She said, "I think you've touched the surface, you haven't reached the depths you can go. You're trying to be small, no, trying is judging...this is not a criticism. You're too hard on yourself. You think you don't deserve it."

I kept pressing on this question. "Do I think I've gone into that place of truly OK?" and my answer was "oh yes." (This, by the way, is an excellent example of the Soto Zen view of the koan arising in daily life.) I returned to sanzen with Gyokuko and told her about Clara. It made sense to her then. She said working on past lives was Bodhisattva work. She gave me a way to work with it, telling me past life karma work was much like this current life karma work, "unraveling the karmic threads." After that encounter, I realized she'd been right, "I haven't felt truly OK to that depth: I have to find that truly OK sense of self in past lives too." This occurred during the evening meditation.

Thursday, June 6, 1996, from quick note before bed: Then, during Vespers I sang along with and to Clara, and I felt she felt more than I ever have the compassion and acceptance of those verses. She rejoices. I cried at her rejoicing. [Om to the One Who leaps beyond all fear! Having adored Thee, may I enter into the heart of the Noble, Adored Kanzeon! Thy life is the completion of meaning; It is pure, it is that which makes all beings victorious and cleanses the path of all existence]

Friday, June 7, 1996, 1:15 pm: As she integrates I feel the presence of Clara practicing right along with me. I feel in her the pleasure of beginner's mind, feeling the soft touch of this compassionate practice. Sometimes I feel I have to say to her, "I'm doing this practice," because she is having a beginner's reaction to it, many of the reactions I've long been through: wanting to do it all; feeling irritated at having to do some things. I feel as though I've had some small very tiny glimpse into the world of a person with multiple personalities.

In the years to come, whenever someone would tell me they just loved my voice when we sang Vespers, I've always felt it was Clara they were hearing.

It is good I have looked back at this. I now have an answer to that nagging question of separateness: love. I hadn't yet experienced that love that swept away all notion of self. I have now.

It was very important to me at this time to work through this as a past life, to experience Clara as a separate self. In the years since, she has informed my understanding of multitudes of selves, no one permanent self, no unchanging self, many heaps of selves arising and falling.

When I met the man who was to become my husband, and he scoffed at the notion of past lives, I had to concede I couldn't really know if it was actually a past physical life, but that it had been useful and important to me at that time to believe it that. The karmic work I had done would not have been as powerful.

Now, with the experience even more distant, I notice I had that dream at the end of May, near the anniversary of my brother's death. He committed suicide on May 25, 1986, on the day after his own birthday. On my birthday. Six years later thanks to my Buddhist practice I began the therapeutic work of untangling that karma. In the life of dreams, Clara could very well have been the me that was still wounded by that past karma, still not OK, even while the main me felt truly OK. If she was a past life, she could very well have been a past self of this life right now.

I just don't know. I am still puzzling over my friend Rinchen's note: "...born before the beginning; has slipped out of his skin again." My good friend H. has bristled over the use of nirvana in advertising, because non-Buddhists think it means heaven, but really it means extinction of rebirth. No more rebirths, and do they really want to use extinction of self to market a sweet fru-fru? No more lives. My eyes start to cross as I try to delve into this notion of the karmic stream, not exactly a soul, but a bundle of conditions leaving the physical body and traveling on some other plane of existence to the next physical body. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is all about negotiating those other planes, the bardos, and is spoken to the dead to remind them not to be afraid of nirvana, of extinction. I don't understand how something whose form lacks substance can continue to exist beyond the body, and really, is exist the right word anyway?

Zen seems to worry itself much less about what happens after death, but more about this life. Yet during a Zen funeral, exhortations are read that are meant to guide the recently departed, just like the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And I wonder, is it that I am a sleepy stupid Buddha and haven't yet awakened to this understanding? or is this a religious construction that helps us who are living feel better about our eventual death?

Death and Gratitude

I went to sleep thinking about death, and woke up early with a dream about death, leaving me unable to return to sleep. Here in Portland, I am outraged that two people died for being guilty of driving while black. In Upside Down, Galeano makes me aware that in Latin America, thousands of people die in one city, for being poor. Here, the homeless are made illegal for existing through camping ordinances and drug free zones, there, they are hunted and killed. Little differences that make me somewhat grateful. But that wasn't what I was thinking about.

I was thinking about someone close to me dying and the devastating grief I would feel. My husband calls that a negative fantasy. I was slow to get to sleep. I woke up early aware of a dream of my own death, the details quickly chased away, disintegrating into shreds and dissolving. Here is where I was trying to get to regarding gratitude, something that eluded me in the light of day, but raised its Freddy Krueger-esque head during those vulnerable dream states of mind.

We are all going to die. Getting real (or unreal) with that fact is the primary purpose of religions. It is the fundamental question of this life. Rich or poor, oppressor or oppressed, comfortable or not, we all will die. The question becomes then, how do we live, to be ready for our death? This notion hovers around the Buddhist meal verse. For whatever karmic reason, we are placed in the lives we are placed. If we have the luxury of comfortable sustenance, that is an opportunity to experience enlightenment. Do we deserve that offering? Who does? The wisdom of the Bodhisattva is always to turn it over, turn it over, turn it over to the weal of the world. There's nothing that says the Bodhisattva can't or shouldn't play, enjoy, and turn that over too.

Beyond the Comfort Zone

A definitive moment in my life happened when I was with a group of people doing dream work. Over the course of a weekend, we were engaging in zen meditation, and rather than the other usual work of a zen retreat, we were examining our dreams. If handled with talent, dream work is intensely therapeutic. The definitive moment came when I hadn’t yet shared my dream. The counselor seemed asked me how I felt, and I responded “I feel like hiding.” My intense feeling of vulnerability surprised me some.

The counselor said, “That’s ok, you can go hide, where would you like to hide? Over here in the corner?” Astonished, I went over there and crouched, the hidey feeling soon gratified and soothed. I had expected something else. We had made a commitment to share, yet I was given permission to continue hiding. With all those concentrated emotions crackling in the air, this compassionate response soon had me willing to come back out. While I was nearly the last to share my dream, and more openings would occur from that work, the definitive moment had occurred: I had uncovered an inclination to hide, and that inclination’s days were numbered.

From that day forward, I was determined not to hide. Where I had been the last to share an intimate thought, I became the first. If a thought rose to consciousness about my fears, my past karma, I pulled on that thread, brought it all to light. I no longer hid from others, or myself. Of course, sometimes that could be intrusive, or tactless, or just plain drama queen material. There would be more lessons learned.

Along the way my fears dissolved, given my repeated experiences of a compassionate world when I let this self-defensive wall dissolve. I learned I could be bigger than I felt I was. I continue to learn how my notion of my self can stretch.

It can be so easy to fall into notions of a static self, and a tendency to nurture that self rather than challenge it. I am a pacifist. I don’t like sports. With such concrete conceits, it’s possible to miss opportunities when they arise. I’ve had the opportunity to stretch these notions of myself.

Given free tickets, I went to my first hockey game. I thought it might be interesting, but to my surprise I really liked it. The players were graceful yet exciting. A smooth execution of a play leading to a goal tasted sweet. While I didn’t appreciate the audience encouragement of fights, I could feel the contributing excitement and adrenalin rush even from my upper level seat. I was happy the home team won. While I don’t see myself becoming an avid follower, I’d love to attend a game again.

On another front, I’ve met someone online who enjoys talking to me (now why would that be?) and wishes to be my friend. Whether this friendship will work out or not, I don’t know. We happen to have some fundamental differences in outlook. Can there still be a friendship in that? As a Buddhist embracing no separation between self and others, embracing non-duality, I like to think it’s possible. Usually my friends fall well within a certain zone of comfort, and we share similar ideals. Yet here also is an opportunity for me to put my ideals to the test: being peace; withholding judgment; stretching my notion of self. I can’t know if it’ll work out unless I give it a try.

It can be that simple, stretching, growing. It’s a matter of meeting opportunities as they present themselves with an open mind, and stepping forward.