March 24th, 2016

Here is today's meditation recap:

Meditation: Day 4 - Fulfillment Holds the Key

(Chopra Center 21-Day Shedding the Weight Meditation)

Centering Thought: In fulfillment, I lack for nothing.

Quote: "We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment." - Hilaire Belloc

Mantra: Ananda Hum (I am pure joy.)

I am

I am sorry that my posts seem to be getting shorter and shorter. Time management is something that is incredibly important to me and I am reasonably good at it. Still, there is much room for improvement. I neurotically schedule things into my planner (no online stuff) and it really helps me. Even though my planner day and my real day are seldom - if ever - identical, it gives me a template and a checklist from which to work. I even schedule in leisure activities, exercise, meditation, and other things that are meaningful and valuable to me.

At the risk of sounding cliche or disingenuous, I will say that experiences more than things without a doubt mean so much more to me. I don't want to live the same year 75 times and call it a life. Life is not a dress rehearsal and time is bar none the most precious and nonrenewable resource there is to me. There is so much I want to do with this precious life of mine and I know that I need to break and change some pretty ingrained habits and patterns of thinking in order to get there.

In the words of Deepak Chopra:

"We have between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day – and many of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday, last week, and last year. The mind tends to get stuck in repetitive thought loops that squeeze out the possibility for new ideas and inspiration. Meditation is a powerful practice for going beyond habitual, conditioned thought patterns into a state of expanded awareness. This is the birthplace of all creativity. The mind is in an open, receptive state and is able to receive flashes of insight and fresh perspectives."

I am not sure whether my meditation practice is at that stage yet but I don't want to be stuck in a rut of thought. I fully believe in the importance of rhythms and routines in life but the idea of stagnancy can be toxic to even the most privileged of individuals.

I don't want to sell either a gratitude practice nor meditation to anybody because I truly believe that people must come to what works best for themselves as individuals, but I do want to comment that since starting these true practices I have found a sense of peace and contentment that is with me through even the more challenging of circumstances and emotions.

Put another way, the groundedness and centeredness that I feel is unshakable by external events and outcomes. I have been feeling a great deal of anger, rage, disappointment, apathy, discouragement, sadness, impatience, irritability, and hurt recently, yet there is something steadfast about my core self. The part of me that will always be me. It is as though I am the vessel and these situations and emotions and circumstances are merely the contents. It is as though I am the chessboard and these things are the pieces. I am the space itself and these are the planets and the stars. This is meditation.

Vulnerability is something that I want to write a lot more about in this blog. As a platform to discussions about relationships and connection, I want to start by telling you all something (one of the many) vulnerability challenges that I am currently facing.

I am waiting for news about admission in to a certain graduate program. It is hard enough to be disappointed and to fail privately. But to fail publicly feels like the end of me. I have told people to not ask me about the school's decision, yet I know that this request was made out of fear and out of the desire to remain detached and almost stony in the face of what we all as humans experience: disappointment, discouragement, sadness. I don't want to be that person that is hard to relate to because I am always living in my brain and not in my heart. As "soft" and as terrifying as it sounds, I want people to know me beneath the various masks I wear and shields I put up. How can we even be comfortable with others or ourselves if our presentation is based upon the fragile and shaky structure of insecurity and self-doubt?

I will end here, but I would like to touch upon this more in the coming days as well as begin a discussion about shame and values.

Quotes:

“Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”

― Cheryl Strayed

“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”

― Cheryl Strayed

“I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

― Cheryl Strayed

“The particularity of our problems can be made bearable only through the recognition of our universal humanity. We suffer uniquely, but we survive the same way.”

― Cheryl Strayed

“Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.”

― Cheryl Strayed

PS Article roundup:

The Jobs With the Highest Gender Pay Gaps

CDC tells doctors to stop testing patients for marijuana

How to Eat Like a Japanese Person

At Last, There's A Body-Positive Underwear Campaign For Men

These Aerial Photos Of California Make The Damage From The Drought Look Beautiful

Prince Harry, Woke Royal, Made a Feminist Speech

Dementia: Alzheimer's disease affects women worse than men


PPS Happy Holi!