I have a difficult time fathoming the following:
"When I sit in my silence and look at my mind, it is only questions of longing and control that emerge to agitate me, and this agitation is what keeps me from evolving forward.
"When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion . . . I began feeling frustrated and judgmental about myself, lonely and angry. But then a fierce response boiled up from somewhere in the deepest caverns of my heart . . . My mind tried to protest, 'Yeah, but you're such a failure, you're such a loser, you'll never amount to anything -"
Here comes the part I can't fathom:
"But suddenly it was like a lion was roaring from within my chest, drowning all this claptrap out. A voice bellowed in me like nothing I had ever heard before. . . And this is what it roared:
"YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS!!!
"The chattering, negative thoughts in my mind scattered in the wind of this statement like birds and jackrabbits and antelopes - they hightailed it out of there, terrified. Silence followed. An intense, vibrating, awed silence. The lion in the giant savannah of my heart surveyed his newly quiet kingdom with satisfaction . . .
"And then, in that regal silence, finally - I began to meditate on (and with) God. p. 157-58
Holy crap! That happens?! It must be true. She wrote about it. And, I don't think you can make that stuff up.
She's been having problems, up to this point, with meditation and devotion and she's at an Ashram. And, I'm stuck in New York City trying to take what feels like a meek stab at a spiritual path. Not only am I boondoggled by the noise in my head, I'm attacked from all sides by the noise of the city, the crowds, the energy, the noise of life for that matter (certainly not like the Eden-like peace of an Ashram).
I've found another thing we have in common. We're both brooders. (I think similarities like this keep me reading). Brooding - those endless, solid trains of thought that invade and vividly play at any given moment of silence. Even moments of meditation get invaded in my thoughts. I here there's a club for that. They've even made jackets. I still judge myself the same way that Liz did.
On her website, she wrote, "Please try, also, not to go totally freaking insane in the process.
Insanity is a very tempting path for artists, but we don’t need any
more of that in the world at the moment, so please resist your call to
insanity. We need more creation, not more destruction. We need our
artists more than ever, and we need them to be stable, steadfast,
honorable and brave – they are our soldiers, our hope. . . Become a knight, a force of diligence and faith."
I feel like my charge is to bring healing into the world. I could be wrong. Even if I am, what a great mistake that would be to try! But, I can't bring healing to others if I'm not healed myself. There's still plenty to be done. There's still some past harms that need to be mended. I will never be rendered clean as the driven snow, but at least I'll have a cleaner connection with God. Then, maybe one day, I'll have a lion roaring inside me. As long as it's not a monkey laughing or a panda farting, I'll be fine.
It's not a comfort to read that Liz is struggling with meditation while being surrounded by meditation and devotion 24/7 in the middle of Nowhere, India. She meditates a bagillion hours a day and I pray at the toilet in the small bathroom at our cramped apartment. I don't regularly meditate and I write at the library. I catch as catch can. I'm struggling.
The negative thoughts for me are that maybe this writing thing was a bad idea. I feel like my freedom is inhibited by the living situation and I have no money. Somewhere inside me I feel offended that I'm relying on the hand-outs of unemployment. I feel like I'm being dishonest. And, mooching off of my fiancee while I wait for the unemployment money to start coming in makes it worse. I feel like I'm staring in the face of crippling poverty and I'm going to take my fiancee with me. Then comes the voice, "quit your crying, you lazy bastard, and get a job!"
So, God, tell me. How can I write and make a living at the same time? I know I ought to say, "I will gladly go back to waiting tables if you want me to." But, I can't say that. And, I won't gladly go. I'll begrudgingly go. Sure, I'm supposed to be so spiritually fit that I can joyfully go about my day despite the insanity of any given restaurant (I have yet to work in a happy, healthy restaurant in NYC).
So, no, I don't yet know how strong Your love is.
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