I Want Goodies

I’m pretty lucky to have friends from a lot of different faith traditions, and also a bunch of people in my life who I’d call “California spiritual” or, more plainly, woo woo. 

I’m talking about the DIY, make your own potpourri of rituals and practices peeps.  Like get some crystal, burn some sage, channel a dash of fairie or goddess or whatever....

Anyway, I’ve heard useful stuff from all different corners, from priests, rabbis, woo woos, and others.  

Things that didn’t work for me a few years ago or days ago work now.  And I have a feeling there’s more to come if I stay open to having more joy in this life.

I’ve become a kind of spiritual gourmand, a belt and suspenders kind of person, an, if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it AND if-at-first-you-don’t-succeed-try-try-again-er.  I like the woo woo.  I like the traditional stuff.  We’ll have a virtual Seder this week.  

I’ll do anything that helps keep my feet on the ground and my head on my shoulders.

So I was watching this Transcendental Meditation guy who also is like an MD/PhD etc etc and he was telling me to put my left hand on my chest and my right hand on my belly and sit comfortably.

And right then I felt dear old Evie, my inner critic, chime in, “What a freak!  What the eff are you doing? Go fold some laundry or make snack or write a bestseller or teach Ax chemistry!”

And, by the way, all that resistance came up even though I’ve actually done the full on TM training and practiced it and it’s been helpful at different times, AND the way I got into it was on the recommendation of some cardiologist friends of Mike’s.  

So it’s like, science science science AND my own experience AND mindful sitting, contemplation, meditation being a, like, super, super-old practice, and this guy is like, “Sit comfortably and breathe.” And I’m like, “Get me the eff out of here.”

But I stayed.  I’ve been in this no-effing-way place before, I’ve run the hamster wheel for miles and miles, getting no where.  

My friend Lucy said, “People say insanity is doing the same thing expecting a different result.  I say insanity is doing the same thing knowing you’ll get the same result.”

So I pushed through that resistance to doing something I already had a faint mini-hope might be good for me, and I forced myself to sit and breathe and do what this teacher was telling me to do.

And it worked.  But I’m taking all the credit for sitting there, for resisting the imagined urgent other things, for allowing myself to come back to sitting, back to inner comfort, even after legit Ax interruptions, when his zoom school screen went black and the other time when his straw got clogged with pulp and the mysteriously unrewarded suck suck sucking became intolerable. 

When those things happened I went to him and I helped, because I could, and he let me, and he returned to peace. In the flow.

And what I realize is there’s help for me too, today, all around.  But I have to take the help in the forms in which it’s given if I want to be at peace, get those goodies, be in flow, stop sucking the clogged straws. And I do want goodies. I do. I’m gonna keep going.

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