i am grateful for:
1) a perfect temperature, ideal sun angle, divine cloud cover, and optimal breeze level. i know i am supposed to embrace change but i wish i could put this day in a bottle and break in case of emergency in january.
2) a lovely bike ride in the park with my sweetie. he is very patient with my biker newbieness. and the trees so perfect and leafy and oxengating were also cheering me on.
3) thinking about the “pain body,” as coined by eckhart tolle. it’s this: “…accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the truth. It’s the emotional pain body. It has two modes of being: dormant and active.” thinking about it like that allows me to take two steps away from my pain and see it as a thing that is not me, but like an electrified fence around my aura. want to take it down, but it’s there for a reason and i’m not sure i have the right clippers. so, what to do? there’s oprah.com, on “dissolving the pain body.” but that seems to be simply awareness. and honestly, maybe i haven’t stayed with it long enough, but awareness seems to amplify it. or maybe i’m just noticing it more. but really, seems to amplify it, which, i think is why so many of us take to drink, or shopping, or chocolate. to avoid amplifying the pain body. which often, yes, amplifies the pain body….
but, ok, he says to just stay with it: “The pain body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing the the pain that lives in you. But if you don’t face it, if you don’t bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. The pain body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of your presence…” hm. ok. i will try.
4) julie dohrman’s anusara class at b & b. she’s so steady and good. and noticed i was having a crappy day and asked if i was ok. which was nice. and a good enough reason to go to yoga.
5) amazon suggesting erotic fiction in its recommendations! hilarious. and it was very focused on a particular genre. and it was right. go, algorithms!
6) making the effort to stay connected with my honey when things feel hard. it is so tempting to retreat or be mean to get him to retreat. but those tiny moments of making eye contact instead of staring at my fork, of humility over blame, make all the freaking difference. i am so grateful i can do that at least some of the time. and that he can too.
7) my new sneakers. (at left.)
8) weekends. thanks, unions that made that happen.
9) rose oil.
10) dreams of being covered in tattoos. beautiful ones that made me feel like a freak goddess queen. now i’m contemplating even more seriously actual ones. especially white tattoos. lovely. not so daring, but beautiful.
