Right here, right now

I had the opportunity to take a solo walk through Descanso Gardens this week and used the time to do a short meditation practice.

Meditation is somewhat frightening to me these days as everything is so very raw and present; focusing more on it just does not seem inviting or relaxing.  With that in mind, I tried to go into it with a huge extra dose of self-compassion, giving myself all sorts of permission to be afraid, and an invitation to use the time to get grounded and centered and find the ever-elusive present moment.

One of the things I'm dealing with, of course, is this unusual knowledge of an uncomfortable near future.  We walk around and know intellectually that we will experience pain and loss and die in our lives.  But our saving grace is that (usually) we don't know when or how much or exactly what the profile of those very painful things will look like.

Going into chemo therapy in a matter of days does not give me the grace of putting this knowledge of an ordeal off into the unknowable future.  It's happening.  There is much coming up that I will have to face, both known and unknown.  There are countless stories of all the ways that I might suffer during the next four months.  There are lists of miseries that I might have to deal with, an assortment of physical fates that look just terrible when cataloged and detailed.  Some of these may happen, none of these, we don't know.  I find myself wondering if the simple act of cataloging and detailing makes the list worse: if I were to list all the things that are going wrong right now, would it seem worse that I actually feel?  How do you list all the things that are going right?  How do you assess and list things like "yeah, I feel like shit here and here and here, but overall I feel like ME and I have a sense of humor and my well being is like a 5 on a scale of 10"?  Or, even, "I feel like shit right now but I know I'll feel better and I just need to get through the next 20 minutes and I'll be OK."

So I know and I don't know what's coming up.  This is absolutely delicious fodder for the worried mind.  I spin and spin and spin, much like I did before my surgery.  In x days this will be hurting, or this will be happening, or this won't be there any more.  It's really a pernicious pergatory.

With that in mind (ah, literally) my goal for my little sitting practice was just to try to settle down.  Because, right here, right now, I was fine.  I was sitting by a waterfall, the breeze was lovely against my cheek, my pain level was very manageable: it was a beautiful warm morning in the world, and all I had to do in the present moment was just be there.

So I started a little breathing mantra.  Very simple: Right here, right now, I'm fine.  Over and over.  And it helped a little bit.  And as I did that I started getting this image of lines of green light emanating between me and my various friends and family, both near and far.  The line of green light started at their hearts, and as I named each one of my friends and family I gathered the lines into my hand.  My brother and his wife up north.  My mother down south. My friend Gail in the UK.  Roger, Spencer, and Taylor at home.  My people at work.  My people in the opera company.  Writing colleagues.  Dear college friends.  High school friends.  My amazing martial arts community.  An accumulation of green lines, representing all the people I love and whom I know are supporting me.

As I accumulated these green strands of light, two things happened.  First, I started to feel the incredible support from so many areas around me.  Then, I realized I was holding all of these in my hand.. and that maybe I didn't need to do that.  That maybe it's not a question of my holding these lines of love and light like reins, but maybe the light could just attach back to my heart... and I did not have to be in charge of the connections.  Maybe I could just connect.  Without doing the work, without holding the energy.  Just by being and acknowledging.

It was subtle and powerful.  Connecting the lines, heart to heart, made a huge difference.  It was now almost as though I were literally supported by this web of green light.  I didn't have to do anything... it was just there.  Keeping me upright, keeping me together.  Fusing us all, back and forth, into this interconnected web.

Right here, right now, I'm fine.  It occurred to me that, at all but that very last moment, this is going to be mostly true for most of our lives.  And then I thought, well, we don't even know what that very last moment will be like, for sure.  Maybe we'll fine right then as well, as we transition to something else, perhaps.  And we  may actually become more fine than we have been, shedding our broken physical shells and escaping to some other plane.  We know, and yet we don't know.  All we have, for sure is the being right now, and those strands of green light connecting our troubled, searching, weary, and very much caring souls together.