With What Is

My mom is really good at games.  She fills out crosswords in record time, answers trivia questions with ease, and loves to watch game shows when she gets a chance.  Growing up, Jeopardy! came on right around the time Mom started making dinner, and I think it helped her manage the stress that came from feeding 7 other people for the THIRD time in one day, knowing she'd be doing it again and again and again.
"What is."
It was the most common "answer" to all of the Jeopardy! trivia.
Except it wasn't an answer, it was a question.  The maddening paradox of Jeopardy! is the "answer in the form of a question" rule because, of course, the questions were actually answers.

This last week, I found myself stuck in a place I like to call "What Is." It's a place where I find answers to questions.  Rather, it's a place where I WAIT for answers to questions.
I LOVE research.  I think I inherited my mother's hunger for information, but it came without the ribbons and fanfare... I am absolute BUNK at games and trivia and I can only finish crosswords with a cheat sheet.

Research lights me on fire, especially when I'm researching PEOPLE.  The best pay off in research in ANSWERS.  I love getting answers.

But what happens when you don't get them as you're looking for them?  What happens when there's no book to look in?  Nothing to punch into the Google search bar?  No person to call for YOUR OWN answer?

This is the place, "What Is."
Sitting in "What Is" has proven time and time again to be one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life.  I squirm because I am NOT patient.  The lack of answers becomes more painstaking than the actual question.

There's a Zen saying -a humorous one -that goes, "Don't just do something -sit there."
Yes, it's funny.  But it is also SO FREAKING SPOT ON for me.  (I'm reading about Zen-like stuff right now.  More about that soon...)

I happened to read an article in a church magazine this last week that was really, really hard for me.  It was about pornography and there was truth in it, but I felt (and feel) there was something off.
So what IS IT?
WHY am I feeling this?

I was triggered.  I reached out and prayed, I called my sponsor.  I processed and I still felt a painful stab in my heart -I felt OFF all around, and I couldn't seem to burst out of the feeling of it all.

I WANTED TO BE OKAY while I waited, while I sat with What Was. Being calm in stressful situations is a personal goal of mine, and I was frustrated with myself -that I WASN'T calm while I waited for answers from God.  In short, I was impatient with myself and impatient with God's lack of answer.
And that double-fold impatience because heavier than the questions I had!

I was annoying myself.

Leading up to this point, God had carefully prepared me. I had gotten back into doing my dailies, and the day I'd read the article, I was in a good place emotionally, physically and spiritually. In the days leading up to my reading the article, I'd been reading a book loaned to me by a friend -it isn't a recovery book at all, but IT ACTUALLY IS.  It's a book about yoga, and as I read it, I feel like my soul is getting a massage, and sometimes I fall asleep because it just FEELS so good.

Days before reading the article, I read a passage in the book that put words to something I'd been trying to put words on for years... the place known as "What Is."

"Through patience, you can possess your soul.  When you catch yourself speeding through life, when you feel you must meet expectations and that so much of being left undone or that you're not succeeding as quickly as you think you should be, you must remember that real growth doesn't come from pushing through or breaking out of anything.  Rather, it comes through a gentle melting in.  The path of patience asks you to be okay with what is, stare it straight in the eye, and open to and learn from what's happening rather than contracting into fear, frustration, and a hidden drive to meet your expectations at any costs.  We must remember that when everything has to be right, something usually isn't." ~Baron Baptiste, "40 Days to Personal Revolution"

As I talked with my sponsor and processed my swirling reaction, I said, "I need to MELT IN."  The next day after I called her again to be accountable for my lack of serenity that was still hanging on, I left a message on her phone and then looked up at my husband and said, "I need to figure out how to be calm and find peace in WHAT IS."
So many prayers were said.
Tears popped to my eyes as I tried to force open a heart that felt hard during General Conference.

 I was reminded of another passage in the book that absolutely fascinated me.

"Each year, I conduct a weeklong bootcamp in the mountains of Montana.  A Lakota elder medicine man takes us through a sweat lodge ceremony, in which up to ten of us sit close together in a pitch-dark tent around a blazing fire, praying and chanting.  I always notice an interesting phenomenon: certain people insist on sitting right by the little exit flap of the tent.  They are adamant, claiming they must be near the door.  I have witnessed these same people break down into intense emotions, fear, and often racking sobs.  You later hear them say that as the steam and heat increased and filled the space with full intensity, they were sure that something terrible was going to happen.  They convinced themselves to stay by saying that if they were near the door, they would be able to make it through to the end.  The truth is that even if they didn't sit by the door, they would make it through.

In our total commitment to inner revolution and growth, we don't get to sit near the door.  We don't get to duck out if the process becomes uncomfortable.  We learn to stay with ourselves, no matter what." ~Baron Baptiste, "40 Days to Personal Revolution"

On Sunday, some solid answers came.  Mercifully short timing.

How can I learn to be okay while I sit in "What Is"?
There's no trivia answers, no outside answer, nothing I can read or study or outline or memorize... the answer is deeply personal to me and found deep within myself.

I can only access it by delving inside -by STAYING WITH MYSELF, no matter what.

I hope I'll get better at it, and I know it will take a great deal of practice.  My impatience is truly one of my grandest stepping stones to God (that's just a nice way of saying it's my biggest thorn in my side).

This morning, I walked outside into the fresh, crisp morning and let my toes enjoy the wet grass -it rained last night... the heavy, gorgeous kind of rain where the sheets fall so fast it looks like mythical creatures are dancing in mid-air.  This morning, everything was new.  I let my bare feet soak up the wet green grass.
How much longer will our grass be green?
I don't think about it.  I can't live in the future.  It's just a shadow of the present, as my pretend-friend James Allen says.
I keep quiet.  I had purposefully NOT checked social media before heading outside.  I pay attention to my breath, and it feels like I'm oxygenating anew my entire being -the stale air from my bedroom was exiting through my mouth as I breathed in the brand new air from the after-storm.
My mind begins to wander and I practice being gentle about pulling it back.  I'm mildly successful.  I begin my prayers, and find that as I pray and give thanks for what it around me and with me, I want to drop my hands down to my side, palms facing forward.
With my mind still and calm, my eyes closed, my palms open, mirroring my heart, I tell God I am ready.
At that exact moment, the sun burst forth from behind a dark rain cloud.  Though my eyes remained closed, I could feel the light.  I could "see" the light changing, everything brightened up behind my eyelids, and I felt God's warm love wash over me completely.

In that moment, I found that What Is was in my front yard, and that God lives forever in What Is.
What Is isn't always painful, but it always has the potential to be peaceful and it always is a place where I can learn, grow and increase in wisdom and humility.

What Is.
It's elusive and also?  The only place we really have.
The past can't be be fully lived in.
The future can't be fully lived in.
Trying to live from from either of them produces only pain, regret, and a shallow kind of life.

The present is What Is.

(I feel like I need to add a disclaimer: I took the pictures AFTER being present.  I didn't snap them in the moment because snapping pictures has the potential to sometimes take me OUT of the moment. Amen.)

Return to Sanity

In our online group meeting this week, we read Step 2.  One of the questions that follows reads:

What does it mean to be restored to sanity?

The opposite of sanity is, in my own world, the place I go to where every other thought is the thought every spouse of an addict is familiar with:

Am I crazy?

In that place, I am blocked.  I can not hear my own gut -my put-there-by-God-and-filled-with-His-truth-and-light Intelligence -and everything begins to blur and swirl.  I short, everything feels like the way life looks when I take my contacts out and lose all sense of sight (except colors!) and depth perception.
Without the aid and help of lenses, I am legally blind my friends.

I went there this last week.  In that place, I was triggered more frequently and powerfully.  I was emotionally edgy, physically tense.  It occurred to me at one point that this state used to be my NORMALCY.
And I felt a little hope in that -as if what used to be my Standard Mode of Operations was now a sort of Lights Flashing, Sirens Blaring State of Emergency.

That's a sign of healing, right?

I know I'm in that painful place when I can not hear what I need.  I'm indecisive, scared, and anxious.

I recently finished reading a James Allen book, and I found therein a gem that has become a sort of imagery mantra for me (is that a thing?  Imagery mantra?... Something I picture in my mind when I feel like I'm crazy?)

 A return to sanity is, for me, being able to hear myself.

 It's finding and tapping into that depth Allen speaks of -it's a vibrant canyon for me, filled with everything God created to give me... in his own words from D&C 59:

18)Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart;
19) Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul.

Walking in that canyon at peace with God, climbing and hiking the up and the downs while the world above whirls with drama, intrigue, and dark storms of every kind.

It's my figurative happy place.  I can tap into it now and then, and I hope to someday set up camp there.

I hope to live within it eventually, as Frankl once found freedom from outer bondage within.  This life feels so binding, doesn't it?

I feel so limited in what I can do with the little knowledge I have... I feel the world beyond is filled with rich treasures of knowledge and wisdom.  This life is a life of bondage where we are called on to tap into the freedom that abides in the one place that carries heaven with it: our intelligence within.

It is our safe haven, and it can not be taken from us from any outward perpetrator unless we grant access.

Or unless we've been blessed with PTSD (or other mental illnesses) in which case, we've become victims of thievery of the absolute worst kind: Thievery of our inner selves.

The good news is we can reclaimed or be reclaimed through God.
And THAT, to me, is what a return to sanity to looks like... it's the return of what's been taken -my peace, my serenity, my voice, my worth, my ability to see myself and hear myself and honor that which manifests itself within.
I bring that manifestation going on within... WITH-OUT and THAT.  THAT is my return to sanity.

I speak up for my safety, set a boundary, remind myself that I am worthy of other people's time (a nod here to a great friend who spoke this truth to me and changed my perspective -you know who you are!) and SO REACH OUT.  I pray before, during and after.  I take any glimmer of voice coming from within and obey what it tells me: a walk, a yoga session, a few more hours without my contacts in, moving a picture in the house, taking off the pants that don't fit right, eating something that came from God's Good Earth (My Playground), taking time to put my bare feet in the grass, taking time to rehearse an affirmation:
I am confident.
I walk with my back straight.
I look others in the eye.
I am enough.
I have nothing to hide.
I do not fear my story being uncovered.
I walk with God.
I am light.
I am joy.
I am truth unfurled.

Without God, this is not possible, for it IS God who speaks to me from within.

God is my sanity, and I am his treasure.