Clarity’s blog

Had a really nice birthday party for Majca yesterday! Here are some videos from it:

No Comments »

I’m trying out FriendFeed, maybe some of you will find it useful as well - it collects all (well, most) my online activity in one place.

Tags: friendfeed

No Comments »

Heya all, sorry for the very light blogging lately, ever since I’ve started using Twitter more my blogging has been kinda blocked… I’ll look into integrating it into this blog more, but until then If you’re interested follow me there.
It’s funny, when I first heard about Twitter I really didn’t get it, I just couldn’t understand why anyone would use it… Not really sure what changed, except that the girl got on it and it was a nice way of staying in touch. And then lately some other people started following me or me them, and I started to really enjoy what they were saying.
It is kinda strange to have people follow me, that I don’t really know, don’t know if they know me, or how they found me. Davee seems to feel the same. But also sometimes quite interesting and fun!

Tags: personal, technology, twitter

No Comments »

This feeling of sadness,
this feeling of loss,
this feeling of betrayal,
This feeling of care,
this feeling of love,
this feeling of compassion,
This feeling of understanding,
this feeling of hatred,
This feeling of revenge,
this love itself and the hate itself,
are all empty, illusions of appearance.

Just rest in this understanding,
O distressed Robert,
Just rest and relax.

It is all ok.

(from Clarity of the Heart to the one known as Robert who tends to suffer quite needlessly)

No Comments »

This is the end you know
Lady, the plans we had went all wrong
We ain’t nothing but fight and shout and tears

We got to a point I can’t stand
I’ve had it to the limit; I can’t be your man
I ain’t more than a minute away from walking

We can’t cry the pain away
We can’t find a need to stay
I slowly realized there’s nothing on our side

Out of my life, Out of my mind
Out of the tears that we can’t deny
We need to swallow all our pride
And leave this mess behind
Out of my head, Out of my bed
Out of the dreams we had, they’re bad
Tell them it’s me who made you sad
Tell them the fairytale gone bad

Another night and I bleed
They all make mistakes and so did we
But we did something we can never turn back right

Find a new one to fool
Leave and don’t look back. I won’t follow
We have nothing left. It’s the end of our time

We can’t cry the pain away
We can’t find a need to stay
There’s no more rabbits in my hat to make things right

Out of my life, Out of my mind
Out of the tears we can’t deny
We need to swallow all our pride
And leave *THIS mess behind
Out of my head, Out of my bed
Out of the dreams we had, they’re bad
Tell them it’s me who made you sad
Tell them the fairytale gone bad

(Sunrise Avenue - Fairytale gone bad)

You know, if I’d spent as much time practicing as I am wallowing around in these love dramas of mine, I’d be enlightened by now…

Well, I sure hope this current one is finally finished…

1 Comment »

the emotional turmoil seems to be calming down at last and my head is beginning to clear somewhat. Now I’m just exhausted from it all. On the positive side, I’ve just started reading Life of the Buddha by Sherab Chodzin and it is really wonderful to read it, like a balsam (? is this the correct word in english?) for my mind (heh, almost said soul!). It just transported me to that time, almost felt like I was walking there with him… And what stands out the most at this time, is the repetition of the core teachings - what has arisen will cease. He says this again and again. In my current turmoil this seems to be a very apt teaching - all of this turmoil is exactly because I can’t seem to let go… Still, seeing how much I just don’t want to let go seems to be quite useful as well.

No Comments »

Sigh… In lots of emotional turmoil again. That’s one thing that one hopes will go away with meditation. Well, it does not, at least not in the way one would think. There’s still reactivity, still pain, despair and all the emotions, but what seems to change slowly is that more and more it just becomes the content and not what one is. So, at the moment this is my practice - just watching these thoughts, this pain, hatred, regret, anger,… And I try to remind myself that there is nothing to fix, nothing to change, just let it flow through. The ideas from the previous post have been very helpful.

So… It goes like this…

This feeling of abandoment is not me, is not myself, is not mine,

these thoughts that I will never ever be loved, that this is just further proof how unlovable I am - they are not me, not myself, not mine,

this pain in my heart is not me, not myself, not mine,

this anger towards you burning in my eyes is not me, not myself, not mine,

this anger towards me that I played along with your games for so long - is not me, not myself, not mine,

these thoughts of wanting to hurt you, expose your ugliness for the whole world to see - not me, not myself, not mine,

these thoughts that I was just a toy to you, discarded when you got bored - not me, not myself, not mine,

this regret for every thought of love and kindness I had for you - not me, not myself, not mine,

this regret for all the effort I’ve put in this relationship - is not me, not myself, not mine,

these thoughts of wanting to never ever seeing you again - not me, not myself, not mine,

…

it goes on and on as you can imagine. All I can do at the moment is just be patient and let this chaos slowly dissolve on its own. And in the mean time, not act on anything, not believe anything in my head and muster every last straw of loving kindness and compassion I have for this human being, just a human being… But real or not, it just fucking hurts…

(supportive comments welcome, any holier than thou advice will be promptly deleted and your IP banned)

3 Comments »

well, it seems i’ve gotten through the worse part, back on my feet it seems… At least as far as my lungs are concerned, as for the other infection I still need to go have some tests done and we’ll see how it goes after that. But I feel tons better so that is something to celebrate!

No Comments »

No Comments »

tumble and rumble:

bernard:

No Comments »

went to the doctor again today and she was not too happy with the test results, so now I’m stuck with 2 different antibiotics for another week and she didn’t want to hear much about me needing to be at work. so, now I’m on sick leave until Thursday and then we’ll see. She now thinks I’m having either a pneumonia or bronchitis on top of the other things happening, yay… I feel mostly ok though, except being tired a lot. Time to rest I guess. I’m not too good at it though, guess I’ll have to learn…

1 Comment »

So, yesterday I finally dragged my ass to the doctor and what I discovered was not very encouraging. I seem to have problems with my liver and an infection of my prostate, both of which seem to have contributed their own share to my current state. Not to mention that my lungs for some reason sound like someone’s who’s a heavy smoker. In any case, they put me on some heavy antibiotics which almost terrify me more when I read of all the possible side effects (especially the “lethal” part in parentheses around some of them is not very encouraging)… I’ve started taking them and so far I feel like shit and have started throwing up. Wonderful. I’ve tried practicing this morning, but all the trowing up was distracting me a bit too much ;), so now I’m back in bed. If things don’t improve, I might just stay in bed and call in sick. At least this regimen is supposed to only go for a week. Good chance to develop compassion though, right? Might as well find something useful in it…

4 Comments »

I’m exhausted. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. I’ve been sick on and off for more than 3 weeks now and I’m just not used to it. Everything feels like too much and all I want to do is hide from everything. I get resentful if anyone asks me for anything. I feel like I have to do tons of stuff yet I don’t have the energy nor the will to do any of them. Sounds like burn out, doesn’t it?

I am still not quite sure how I manage to get into this kind of situation. I mean, there is a lot on my plate right now - work is busy, school is demanding more and more and of course there is also my local Shambhala group. Not to mention the mess that is my personal relationships.

And I’m doing individual therapy and group therapy which is bringing out quite some painful things. So, there is a basis for feeling exhausted, but still, there seems to be something I do to make it much worse. My group therapist asked me yesterday - “How are you with yourself?” and I found I couldn’t really answer.

In any case, I feel like I’ve hit a wall and I just can’t continue in this way. My cup is empty and there is nothing left to give to anyone, so time to recharge. I’ve been giving and giving and forgot to take care of myself. If I could, I’d go into a solitary retreat and just focus on practicing for at least 14 days. I feel this is one thing that nourishes me tremendously, yet I’ve neglected it quite a lot lately. Alas, work and school do not allow me to do that, so I’m trying to do a sort of semi retreat - cutting down on all unnecessary activities and focus instead on things that nourish me - practice, going for walks, baths, massages.

I’ve stopped seeing meditation students, stepped out of any organizational things to do with Shambhala, turned off my IM programs and declared to my friends that I’m in retreat and won’t be responding to emails unless they’re urgent until mid-January. It was also very nice to receive a lot of kind words and support when I announced this, felt very nourishing. I couldn’t help but notice though that people that responded first and were most supporting were people I don’t actually know so well, new friendships that arose only about a month ago, whereas from people I feel I’ve given the most too I almost didn’t hear anything at all. Hmm, perhaps time to reevalute where to put more of my energy in the future?

And I’ve started reading things that nourish me, like Ani Pema’s book When Things Fall Apart. This is a book that helped me the most during one of the most difficult times in my life and rereading it again now feels really like a blessing. So much warmth and wisdom comes through, so many things I badly need to hear. Don’t struggle, don’t push away the pain, just relax with it and embrace it. Be curious, be kind. Life will always be a mess, it’ll always change, stop struggling to control it.

So, today was a first day of this new regime and so far so good. I’ve managed to stay away from the computer for most of the day, managed to rest quite a lot and also practice a bit more than usual - 2 hrs in the morning and about 1.5 hrs in the evening and it was quite a pleasure. Sometimes it feels so nice just to be able to feel my breath and my body, just to let my awareness flow over it and stay with it no matter what the feelings are. It felt truly healing. And a looooong bath that I took was also quite nice.  I’ll keep you posted how things continue…

3 Comments »

i’m really feeling in a foul mood today. I thought that writing about it might help, but I find this idea quite abhorrent as well. It feels like I’m just unhappy with everything, but especially with myself. Feels like the critical mind has a spotlight at the moment and it’s revelling in it as much as it can. And what does it say?

Your life is a mess. You are a loser. You can’t commit to anything, what the f* are you so afraid of? Your buddhist path is a sham, you’re just pretending to be following but 99% of your day you’re just thinking of yourself, no dharma thought in sight. How can you even think you’ll accomplish anything in this way? You’re just procrastinating all the time. Can’t even do your job properly. Do you really want to find out the truth or is this just a game?

umm… hello, self hate, long time no see… Seeing all of this in such plain sight in a blog post just makes me sad, but sad in a warm way, not depressing way. Yes, I keep losing track of where I want to go. Yes, I keep trying not to look at my life. Yes, 99% of my day I’m thinking of myself. … A lot of that is true.

But now, when I look at all this, hating myself for this is surely not going to help. What about some encouragement instead? A hug? An admittance that yes, I’m human, I’m struggling. And that I still keep going, trying to love, learning to accept it all. Do I fail? Yes, lots of times.  And then I go on, hopefully for as long as I need to.

1 Comment »

I was just browsing through a book called Zen Sex, which I’m just about to give to a friend as a birthday present and I stumbled upon this poem:

The autumn breeze of a single night of love is better than
a hundred thousand years of sterile sitting meditation.

which is from a beloved Zen poet Ikkyu. What do you think?

(since at the moment I only have the latter I cannot compare! )

1 Comment »