May I be healed.
May I be free from suffering.
May my heart be filled.
May I find peace.
I don’t remember where I got this mantra. I believe it comes
from Buddhist philosophy or the yoga tradition, though I probably got it from a
self-help psychology book. I’ve been reciting it for years, not as a regular
exercise, but in times of stress, or sometimes just to help me relax before
going to sleep.
Reciting this gives me a sense of contentment and even joy.
But it has no intrinsic power; it isn’t in itself anything more than a prayer
or a wish, words. I learned it during a time in my life, after my divorce, when
I was trying to understand myself and my emotions. Why did I stay in a
relationship for so long that was dissatisfying and eventually painful? And then
how could I, at age 40 (then), “fall in love” at the drop of a hat, then be so
pained when it didn’t pan out?
Songwriting and performing was one of my responses to my
pain, and I had a period of creative awakening, writing over a hundred songs in
the early 90’s from which I chose some and made a solo CD of original acoustic
music I titled, “Lessons Life’s Taught Me.”
I also started a seeing a therapist who helped me explore
childhood pain, how those early experiences stay in our minds, coloring and magnifying
our emotions and responses in the present. I learned not only how to recognize
that so that I could keep the present in better perspective, but through a
method described by John Bradshaw in his seminal self-help psychology books
(The Homecoming, etc.) as “inner-child” work, I actually reduced or eliminated
some of the early pain, making me much better equipped to operate as an “Adult
in transactions with other people.” I refer there to elements of a kind of
psychological model called TA, or Transactional Analysis, popularized in a book
written some 40 years ago titled I’m OK,
You’re OK, in which, to give the barest and simplest summary, people have
three choices or possibilities in any interaction with another person: to be
playing a Child role, a Parent role, or an Adult role. To play either Child
(needy, immature, manipulative, emotional, also possibly full of wonder,
curious, naïve, joyful) or Parent (authoritarian, directive, worried, angry…),
often forces the other into the opposite role and causes “tapes” from childhood
experiences to run in the background coloring the interaction. Even if only one
person can consistently maintain the Adult role, generally logical, not
emotional, there is a better chance of keeping the interaction on the Adult to
Adult level.
Since the vast majority of people do not escape early
childhood without some emotional pain, and relatively few ever go through
therapy to help them deal with it, it follows that there are likely a lot of
people walking around dealing with various levels of childhood pain coloring
their responses to the world. In extreme forms, it might look like road rage,
but for most it’s probably just difficulty communicating in relationships or
pettiness, overreactions of hurt feelings, anger, sadness, in a given
situation.
But before I go any farther, let me correct any impression
that I think therapy is the only path to healthy emotions and relationships.
Some people, I’m sure, successfully work through programs or exercises provided
in self help materials. Others find the same kind of liberation from childhood
pain in their religious or spiritual experiences. I actually believe that the
goals, or at any rate the potential results of religious practice and that of
psychology amount to much the same things.
Fast forward twenty-two years, and you’ll find me, retired
in my early 60’s, remarried for the last eighteen years, and in the midst of
another awakening of my creative soul, my muse, call it what you will, but not
limited it to music. In the past couple months, I must at least partly
attribute it to my change of diet, I’ve had a host of creative ideas, many of
which I’ve acted on, and to my great satisfaction, they are yielding
interesting results.
MCHMess (that’s my word for the chemical spill/water crisis
around Charleston, WV that began on January 9, 2014 and continues to affect the
conversation here), has had a big impact on me. Those of you who’ve been
reading my blog know it hasn’t affected me like most people: I’m not afraid to
drink our tap water, though of course I didn’t drink while the advisories were
in effect and didn’t choose to drink during the period that odor from the
chemical lingered in the water in my house.
No, my assessment was that the efforts to contain and clean
up the spill were effective, the chemical, while nasty and not a substance that
should ever have gotten in our water, is likely not dangerous at the low levels
it has been found in some tap water since the “Do Not Use” order was lifted,
and that the CDC got it right or very close to right when they set the
“screening level”, the level at which it was not likely to affect public
health. That reasoned position is not very popular in the affected region.
My response to the spill, however, was to spur me to action
on environmental issues well beyond chemical storage, which is, of course also
important. I decided it was time for me to do something more about Mountain Top
Removal (MTR) coal mining and to learn more about fracking and its
environmental impact. It’s time to get serious about doing something about
Climate Change as well.
I attended some meetings and some rallies. I wrote new
verses to Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land and sang it at big MTR rally
at the Capitol in Frankfort, KY, and again at the Capitol in Charleston. I
walked the halls of the Capitol on E-Day, a day when WV environmental groups
have a big lobby effort. And soon after that I decided that meetings and
lobbying weren’t my best use of time. I decided the people already doing that
needed more resources, more money, so I would do what I love to do and do
pretty well, create and promote music events. I began talking with others about
my ideas, including WV artist Mark Blumenstein, and a Charleston area software
engineer and musician, Kevin Crump, and out of those conversations came AWARE:
Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment. And now, AWARE is about
to “go live” as a project of West Virginia Citizen Action Group which I direct.
The website is not quite ready for public viewing, and I’m not going to spend
time in this space describing the project, but briefly, we will raise money
through holding events: concerts, art shows, craft fairs, and encourage others
to do so in our name and send us proceeds. We will distribute the money we
raise to environmental action groups in West Virginia (possibly expanding in
the future).
I’ve gone far afield in this long blog post, but if you’re
still with me, I’ll wrap up shortly. Starting up this organization has been as
creative an act as I’ve ever engaged in; it came, as great songs sometimes do,
with inspiration and because I was open to my “muse”. Part of my openness to my
muse at this time is, I believe, due to changes in my body from losing weight
and eating differently.
My metabolism is different, and there are no doubt
chemical/hormonal changes—I’m sleeping less (my brother is concerned I may be
going through a thyroid induced energy burst which runs in my family and I’ve
agreed to be tested), and I’ve been finding when I do my little Yoga routine
that is basically a series of stretching exercises I haven’t ever done on a
regular basis, I’m compelled to expand the stretches, hold them longer, and try
new positions, sometimes experiencing “rushes” of energy as I “open up” into a
position my body hasn’t been able to make since youth (and I didn’t do yoga
then).
And I’ve found myself reciting the mantra I opened with
more, but felt like I needed to revise it to reflect my current thinking. This
is what I tell myself now:
May I be one whole being: body, mind, and spirit.
May I be free from fear, anxiety, and the slavery of painful
emotion from the past
May my heart be filled with unconditional love.
May I be at peace
My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 22, April 6, 2014
