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Posts from the ‘belief’ Category

Jul 2

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Home at Last…pipe dreams do come true

l65979544-m0xd-w400_h300_q80It’s glorious. I love everything about my new home.  Really, everything!

The beautiful wood floors, the stain glass windows( see the previous post), the large yard, the once barn/now garage/soon to be art studio, the window seats in the living room (my favorite place to sit) my doorbell, the lovely perfectly sized kitchen(not too small..not too big), three bedrooms, the ceiling fans (so nice here), the lilac bush and the giant maple, the front porch…the back porch, the neighborhood, the next door neighbor, the town, the beautiful White Mountains that surround us…

Chris took me on a drive last night to see moose, still elusive. As we were heading home he said something to the effect that we had sacrificed a lot to get here. It’s true. We’d talked and planned and acted on a dream of coming east for about a year and half. We gave up the security of jobs and friends and a known way of living for a giant unknown. We have spent a lot of money and energy to realize our dream, our scheme, our plan for a different kind of life. We have been each other’s sole companion and confident, cheerleader and best friend. More than a few judged what we were doing. They thought us fool hearty…that we  needed to be careful..have more of a definite plan. We did what we did. Sometimes you have to take a chance and leap. We’re still leaping, there are still some unknowns, but what happens tomorrow is always unknown.

Today, I know that I love where I am living. For the first time, truly, I feel home. I am in a place of my own choosing. Today, there is no place else I’d rather be.

Feb 1

everyone who has a blog

raise your hand

Jan 11

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the order of things

In Regimes of Truth, Foucault maintains that no one person holds a coherent aspect of him or herself throughout the varied activities of his or her life.  Who we are in the voting booth isn’t who are in the bedroom. Never more have I come to know this than I have as an art student.

It seems I am constantly asked “what kind of an artist” I am.  I understand the question, but I am at a loss for a reply.  “I don’t know yet,” is my usual response. But the truth is, I don’t know if I will ever know. I don’t believe I have to.  Perhaps it would be easier to call myself a painter; and just a few posts I did just that.  But even then, others want to know what it is that I am saying with my painting, what is the purpose, what drives me. It’s as if every piece of art is to hold some dire message, my message..who I am and what I’m saying..Sometimes, in fact most of the time, I just like the feel of the paint on the canvas.  I like to see my brush strokes, heavy and light, broad and very tiny.  I love the color and the way the oil feels when it charges my brush.  I like to find color in the whitest of white and the darkest of blacks.  When I paint, or draw, and knit; when I create I feel settled.  Perhaps that should be my artist statement, “I paint to feel settled.” or better..”I paint hoping to feel settled.”

Aug 15

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“Real Peace is Unshakeable”

The words of Yogi Bhajan resonated as I sat in meditation this evening. Real peace is unshakeable.

Real peace is uneffected..unaffected..it is simply  our original state of being, before the mind believed anything at all to be true.

May 28

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prayer

The other day I texted a friend, “As a nondualist, who does one pray to when in need of a favor from the universe?”

He sent back a blank text.

“Great!” I thought.

The truth is, his answer was accidental; he hadn’t meant to send an empty text.  But the answer was nonetheless a good one .  This morning I received my weekly message from Eckhart Tolle (I’m on an email list)..”An amazing realization is in the present moment there is only what is, but there are no problems. And if your attention remains in the Now, you no longer inhabit a world of problems. Challenges you may still face, but they come to you in the space of Now.”

Prayer has been my tool for asking, “Please help me!”   I have also used prayer to say “thank you!” But for the most part, prayer has been a petition for some universal favor. I have to wonder,  did I receive the help I asked for?  If I did not, did I choose to believe that God had known better for me and chosen to answer “no, not this time, Deidre.”

Everything I need is this moment, everything that is, is Now.  How perfectly convenient.  The range of possibility  is endless. My only prayer need be “yes.”

Apr 10

What I have learned…

“Yoga is a practice of observing yourself without judgement. If we do not pay attention to ourselves in our practice, then we cannot call it yoga.”…Desikachar

I am

what I believe…

let me only

believe the beautiful

Apr 4

Nietzsche was a Yes man

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, ‘Never have I heard anything more divine’?”

Nietzsche would have answered the above with the latter response.   I would like to live in a way in which I would too. I haven’t quite figured out how that is exactly possible.  In moments…it has happened.  I just need to extend those moments and discover how to live in the waiting  peacefully.

I have waited a lot in my life.  Years of waiting even.  It was in the waiting that I taught myself how to knit..learned to meditate..and made some of my biggest life decisions.   Waiting can be remarkable and meaningful; and never really waiting.

Mar 14

belief

Last Wednesday at my yoga teacher training class we had a seminar on the Bhagavad Gita that “the Swami” facilitated.  The fact is I love the Ashram where I attend yoga and am now studying.  The grounds are beautiful; I love the yoga offered there; the people are warm and welcoming and really smart and accomplished too. It’s pretty wonderful.  What I don’t understand yet…is the Swami.  He’s the leader of the Ashram, a man who has spent his adult life living the life of a guru in America. Not an easy path in life…not an east thing to understand.

What is hard for me to get, well one of the hard things for me, is the devotion others have for him.  Perhaps it is akin to the devotion Catholics have for Saints…maybe I’ll ask Swami that next time I have the chance (he and I are both former Catholics).  Maybe it’s that I haven’t experienced the Swami in a way that I would feel compelled to devotion.  Save for the love I have for my kids, I guess I lack the experience of devotion in an earthly relationship.

Lately I feel I have little belief in anything. What I have is my experience…my subjective and neural response to the world. That’s it… That’s what I believe in.  Truth is moving object..memory can’t be trusted…the experience in the moment…it’s all I have.  And it can bring me great comfort.  My sadhana, my spiritual practice, is learning how to be in this world.  Just be. That’s what I believe in now.