Absolute Madness and Waking Up

There are those whose path to awakening, to enlightenment comes through the quietude of meditation. There are others who get to their nirvana by "blowing the mind" through artificial means. Finally there are the practitioners of mind-bending word crafting: the Werner Erhards who can scream you into an "ah-hah", or the Deepak Chopra's or Eckhard Tolle's who can lull you into the same place.

I discontinued my lifelong passion for wine and all things alcohol three years ago and have discovered from time to time what drove me to push down my anxieties into numbness. This particular Christmas shopping season has been my occasion for dropping into the madness of so many years' suffering.

Friday (the 21st) I pushed myself out of the ice-covered driveway and into the rain/sleet/snow to begin a shopping sprint (spree lite) that would allow me to participate in the annual ritual of Christmas giving. After fingering fake designer handbags, sniffing body creams with scents whose names may have been dreamed up on absinthe, I collapsed with my saran wrap thin shopping bags into an empty bench with another lukewarm coffee and let my body feel the pain of the day, the week, the season.

This is what I wouldn't let myself feel in my drinking days---the tightness starting in the center of my back and encircling round my ribcage to the front center ribs. I could feel it Friday and I have felt it on and off for the past three days. There is one thing I have learned on the pathway to waking up: this too shall pass.

And so tomorrow is Christmas day and then the day after is Christmas passed and past. I have delved once again into my (and our collective) absolute madness and awakened just a tiny bit to see it as a play, as theatre. Come January 1st I will be out of the cuckoo's nest and into the next annual marker of another year. But this quiet awakening, brief as it has been, is worth it.

End of Year Introspection

It's a dangerous proposition to noodle around in deep internal psychological terrain during an already stressful season. Like right NOW. Nonetheless it's the perfect time of year to take full account of one's past year.

I'm not talking about New Year's resolutions; I mean tying up loose ends, crossing off unfinished items that have lost their significance by lack of interest or a strong enough vision to fire up desire to get it done no matter what. Last Saturday I organized a small group of professional colleagues and we did a guided meditation, some writing, and some releasing of lingering pain that had its primary tendrils in our heads.

It turned out to be a good way to kick off a string of completion activity: redesigning a budget for my son to pull himself out of struggling from paycheck to paycheck; declaring the tiny room I called the meditation room a storage room, since that is what it has become for the almost three years I've lived here and rightfully so; signing off on my website redesign and a new brochure to relaunch my wedding brand for the 2008 wedding season. It feels good and that's what counts. It feels better than receiving presents: giving oneself the gift of "moving on" is a liberation. This is not ,as I said earlier, new year's resolutions; what's done is done and 2007 marks the end of some unfulfilled intentions as well as the successful conclusion of others. Either way it's a fresh beginning to the next number of good intentions. Moving on happens with us or without us. I like to stay in motion.