This week, I learned, that some things are just between me and God.
Earlier last month, I felt a lot of anxiety from my brain to my body. Stress swarmed around me like a cloud, even if I absorbed only a portion. I felt imbalanced, from too much work, and too little non-work. When I began noticing that I missed certain aspects of myself, I set to "re-organize" things. I believe that there are an infinite number of opportunities and ways to exist in the world in the same way some scientists believe that there is infinite space, time, and other phenomenon. I had to create a different way of existing, and part of this required me to create more space for spirit.
Spirit really asks little of me in my relative life. It only asks me to be. I had found this difficult in the recent past, particularly around thoughts. I was always thinking, and sometimes, I tell myself: "Stop." I am slowly growing better at being quiet. Quiet invites silence, under which I can surrender. Silence, I've found, is my best mode of listening, because, Universe offers me instructions when I listen. September was an exceptional month for Spirit; October for mind. But this week, I had to slow my mind to see everything else.
My life "re-organization" at the end of October entailed less space for thinking, and more space for thriving. I made schedule changes; I made priority-changes; I made pacing-changes. All of this was helpful. But there was a neglected area: I had to re-align my mind to reach my spiritual dysphoria. I interpreted this instruction after two weeks.
What I noticed during the month was that I was internally reacting to "new-news." Information that I learned that seemingly changed a situation one way or another. The funny thing, though, is that not a thing had changed--only my perception changed. My mind had turned to see things as challenging, difficult, or negative. In
sangha, we call this outcome a "story." We construct other thoughts based upon a false thought about a condition of a form (an element which makes up other things). I had successfully dismantled stories before but I had never witnessed it in the making. I did so because mindfulness training had allowed me to slow my mind. I saw my mind receiving information, reacting to it, and piling on other thoughts to make sense of it. When I noticed this, I began pressing a "self-destruct" button in my brain. Power off. I did this by saying, "
Everything's changed,
nothing's changed." I'd recite this until the story disappeared. It's proven to be a helpful mindfulness tool, and a tool that has allowed me to dismantle an incredible harmful story that I had recited over recent months.
The story is this: I feel fundamentally misunderstood. Strangers make assumptions about me. Family respects, though, cannot comprehend me. Even dear friends, in certain areas of my life, must take leaps of faith. I actually was thinking this week, as I do from time to time, maybe I should leave law school to become a monk or nun (it doesn't much matter to me these days). I seriously
contemplate this idea, among others, every so often. Folks don't get it, which is well. What is sometimes difficult is feeling like you are on a perpetual island, even distant from the ones you trust and love. There are many moments where I feel loved, but few where I am understood.
This is how I have chosen to exist during this lifetime. This may change, and change many times over. It may not. What God has been telling me, and I have not appreciated until recently, is that it just is. There is no loneliness when you see the universal reflection. And, when I am confused about this part of the path, I simply need to listen. I cannot, and should not, explain this way of existing.
It's between me and God. And, from there.
Post Script: To put this entry into a little more context -
"The spiritual path does not go that way. It is a lonely, individual path."
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Chogyam Trunpa
