Spirituality is a necessary component for basic survival

This month though it’s not even over feels like a whirlwind in terms of the ups and downs I’ve been going through. I feel like i’ve been worn down to the bone with the stress of waiting and wondering whether gojira’s visa will get approved. I’ve been through so much these last 5 years and I just want him to get here so we can get married and start a happy life together. I have no doubt in my mind that I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with him but its hard dealing with all this with him so far away. I feel like I can deal with all the hardships and troubles that life will throw at me but its unbearable when I am here and he is there.  I think I’ve been suffering a lot more because im spiritually lost. I’ve been brought up as a Hindu but it has not given me what I need. I’ve waited for 27 years of finding a sign of faith of reassurance and I’m still waiting. I think though my parents have taught me a lot of good values and morals they have been too lax when it comes to religion. They pick it up and drift off whenever it suits them and I think in this manner I have lost out. Gojira and I have talked extensively about religion and have decided its best that I convert to Christianity which is his faith. Not only to keep his parents happy and so I can be by his side when he goes to church but the fact that our children should not feel confused and write it off as something frivolous and unimportant. I’ll admit initially I had it in mind to convert for namesake and not wholeheartedly embrace the Catholic faith because it was the only way his parents would accept me and I would be able to have a church ceremony. I didn’t think I would be interested in following it. I didn’t even second glance at it. Maybe it was the fact that I’ve been brought up with the stories of how they try to convert you and save you and all the things my parents have fed me. I’m not denying those things but I think I didn’t give it a real chance because I was only looking at it from one side… one perspective.. someone else’s opinion. I think it’s time I develop my own opinion based upon my experience with Catholicism. Right now being so broken down, I am so raw, so ready and so open for something that will pick up and help me face these rough days. I want to be a part of something grounding and powerful.

I have been following the recent story of the rescued Chile miners who have been trapped a 1/2 mile underneath the ground for 69 days. From the updates I’ve been getting from news sources like CNN they say its very rare for people to survive this long in such dire conditions. It’s being speculated that these miners had more chances of surviving because of the fact that Chile’s population is so strongly immersed in the Catholic faith. The fact that religion was such a big deal for them probably helped them cope with their situation as opposed to giving up hope and losing faith that they would be rescued soon.  It just goes to say we were always brought up with the idea that our basic survival depended on things such as shelter, air, water and food. But these are no longer the only things we can survive on. Spirituality plays a big part in our basic survival. we need religion to ground us. to give us faith. and the will to live no matter what struggles we face.

Gojira is slowly and steadily introducing me to the Catholic faith and I’m really enjoying it so far. I never thought I could enjoy a religion. but I am. I’ll admit sometimes it’s difficult to understand but asking him questions and reading up the history is helping me to begin grasping the concept of Catholicism. He made me a pdf of Novenas which are supposed to read when praying. I printed those out at the beginning of this week so i can recite them everyday. I began praying in the evenings by saying Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be but since today I started reciting them in the morning as well. Since it’s a Wednesday I’ll begin saying the rest of the prayers outlined.  As a part of the prayers I’ve learned it’s also important to share them as per the explanations so I’ve decided I’ll be posting some of the Novenas on here as and when I do them. Maybe this will help someone else out there like me.  The Novena prayers I am doing are devoted to the Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I find this so intriguing because when I took a class for Art History 101 at UB way back in 2006 I learned about the famous painting derived from the Byzantine Empire. This is my favorite depiction of that painting. There was a similar picture of this painting on the pdf that Gojira made for me.

It’s breathtaking. Art in its purest form.  I’m thinking of introducing a spiritual category to my blog so I can share more of my experience of being introduced to the Catholic faith.

METTA MIND JOURNAL WITH CYNIC’S PAUL MASVIDAL: “A BRIDGE TO THE VIEW”

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 at 5:00pm by Paul Masvidal

Journal entry, twelve years ago:

“Today I am sad. It hurts to be human. The walls are closing in on my peace and I go deeper into a sadness all too familiar. The tears from my formative years when I would cry incessantly because of psychic pain have arisen again. A resurgence of that old pain is in my body like a parasite I can’t control. I’m a suffering child. The human experience can be very trying and today I am tested. Today I am broken. All hope is lost. I am exhausted. Where does my fervor for life come from?”

…after that journal entry, I wrote this poem:

Cactus
Black bones in me
Corroding everything
They’re floating free in my eyes
You say I’m losing my sight
Don’t rescue me
I don’t plan on getting out
I’ve lost the key
Hug me I’m a cactus

I was on the edge that day.

Reading through old journal entries, those words struck me like a person from a past life—a person who’s not around anymore. I see in those words someone who didn’t know what to do with his pain. I spent many years in that place of sinking into my own sadness. My depression was insidious…and slow, like a turtle. It kept me in bed for days at a time. It was like a deep sleep that I couldn’t shake. Eventually the walls began to close in. If I didn’t put myself back together and find some way to engage with life again, I was going to end my story.

For the thing which
I greatly feared is come upon me,
and that which I was afraid of
Is come unto me. I was not in safety, neither
had I rest, neither was I quiet;
Yet trouble came.
—Job

This epigraph appears in Darkness Visible, William Styron’s true account of his descent into major depression. Since I was meditating even during this period, what I discovered was that the depression was in my biology and in my bones like a genetic disposition. Beneath this biology I found a lot of psychic pain that wasn’t my own, but like an empath (and all humans are empaths), I had been taking on the “life” sadness of my family, our collective history, and the environment around me.

(Chicken or egg conundrum: Does depression begin in the mind and spread to the body? Or, is the physical body weighted down, depressed, and suppressed by ancient human history / DNA…and this (ill)informs the mind? And, in all cases, the human spirit remains “untouched,” quietly cheering you on, until the mind or body, or both, give out and then that’s all you wrote?)

I was always able to reference a spiritual perspective throughout my period of major depression, but none of that mattered. And that’s why I return to the biological and psychic perspective. It was deeper and larger than me. The sadness overcame my entire being. On the other side of that sadness, I discovered courage. The courage to suffer with dignity and grace. The courage to look straight into the darkness and not be afraid. I realized that this sadness was actually powerful and beautiful, and it didn’t have to be debilitating. I could wield it and make it work for me, like an energy that gets channeled into something constructive. I had the courage to be sad and not push it away any longer. I accepted things as they were, and that was when the healing took place.

Whatever series of life events it was that initially triggered the depression now seems inconsequential. What’s crucial is that it acted as the “bridge to the view.” I was finally able to see the wealth of sadness and depression that I had been holding for so many years. This gigantic black whole finally gave me a vantage point to access the underworld of my deepest fears and quiet childlike pain that I’d been carrying around my entire life. I finally got intimate with this monstrous empty space and gave it a big hug, cactus thorns and all. I’d been a prisoner of my mind, my conditioning, my whole being, for all of my life, until that moment.

Today, depression still arises, but it doesn’t have the same charge. It’s a softer blow now, and familiar enough that I’m able to see it as though it’s someone else’s pain. I don’t have to embody it the way I used to, and I no longer care for it and feed it in the way that I had grown accustomed. Instead, I just let it move through me like a wind, and I’m better now at taking care of myself when the confusion appears. I see how transient these emotional energies are and I trust that they’re going to change and transform into something else. I don’t know if it’s years of sitting on the cushion and meditating that caused the shift. Maybe all these years of songwriting saved my life. I’d guess it’s a combination of the two that helped?

Life experiences rise and fall like the ocean’s tide, so I now choose to see depression as a big, unknown space that invites me in for a specific transformational purpose. Nightmares usually end, or “come to light,” when we face our fears and hang out in that space, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. When that happens, we begin to see into and through the darkness, making friends with our enemies or our own shadows that aren’t fully integrated into our personalities. They appear like phantoms that almost have a mind of their own, but once we become still enough to take a look at these “dark” parts of ourselves, we find that the monster was our own creation. We made it up in order to cope with life.

Life doesn’t require us to do anything except show up, but we try so hard to give it purpose with our stories of what we think life should be. We love to play god and think we’re running the show, but the show runs itself without our help at all. One could say depression, or darkness, in general, is not really negative at all, and that it’s more closely related to clarity. It could be an opportunity to slow down, take a long, good look, and get to know ourselves a bit better.

-PM

NOTE: Do you ever get into bed ready for a good night’s sleep, but all that happens is… nothing? You just lie there in the dark with your eyes open? A friend gave me a relaxation / sleep mask called “Mindfold,” that blocks out all light but allows you to keep your eyes open comfortably. It’s interesting to discover that after awhile, you’ll notice that you’re able to penetrate the darkness and see within it. It’s like using your eyes in a new way. Because my eyes are no longer receiving and processing visual information, one of two things happens: (1) the mind comes in and starts to turn the darkness into a movie screen for my monkey-mind thoughts, or (2) I relax into the emptiness and find a sense of ease in this unknown space. It’s like moving straight into a void of blackness and into “Darkness Visible.” Maybe the “Mindfold” returns me to the womb experience again and that’s why I like using it. I invite you to revisit your ideas of darkness and see where it takes you.

(Gojira showed me this and I wanted to share this with you all. I’ve never read something so inspiring.. I hope it makes me stronger and helps me to become patient and calm and happy and focus on my life till the right train comes along… This light is turned off.. )

Currently listening to
Chapter V
By Staind

SUMMAMABITCH $!@#$%!!?!….. >:|

SUMMAMABITCH $!@#$%!!?! That’s what Bernie Mac used to say when he got annoyed or bugged with something…. Gosh, its just been one of those weeks where you wonder what else can go wrong…. I guess I should be grateful that I have a job, I have a roof over my head, I have a kickass boyfriend (hmmmm are u listening gremlin?) I have my arms and legs intact… buttttttttt…. I want to vent and so I will… sigh… I guess it all started from the weekend my ipod decided to ditch me and go to ipod heaven… I feel lost without it…

my music-less life is soooooo sadddddd and silent and scaryy… of course i listen to music on the computer when I get home from work but its just not the same… also I have a hell of a long ride to work and I actually used to enjoy my ride getting to listen to music uninterrupted for a nice half an hour to 45 mins stretch… but such is life. those apple assturds at Adlabs are telling me that its not fixable and they said I have the option of buying a brand new one… (thats a 10 to 13 grand hole in my pocket right there) or I can choose to give this broken one to them where they send it to Apple and send me a brand new one back for 7 grand… (we’re talking rupees here people!!) if it wasnt for the fact that i bought brand new ipod compatible dock speakers then Id probably consider changing my brand to go for something more long lasting and durable. I swear I took care of this except for a few haphazard slip ups where I’ve dropped it. But doesnt everyone drop their ipod at least once or twice? and if so, isnt apple supposed to make them durable and hardy enough to last more than 2 frickin years???? i mean because i have friends who’ve had their ipods last and last for a good 5-6 yrs thats why i bought it!!! and mine dies in 2 yrs? gimme a frickin break… then theres the issue of buying a silicon cover or a plastic hard cover. then theres the issue that the dock speakers i have u really have to jam the ipod in there to get it to connect… maybe that f*cked it up…. i just donno…. ugh…. anyways so here i am ipodless… now last week i found out my bike really needs servicing. regular checkups are not too bad thats just 300-500. but when somethings wrong with ur bike or needs fixing you know its gonna be a chunk of money leaving your pocket. I expect atleast 2-5 grands to go with this repair because theres a lot of oil leaking from it. and i require my bike to travel everyday…. its my only mode of transportation. (thats the only reason my bike is priority over the fixing of my ipod otherwise i wouldnt need a split second to make a decision that ipod comes first!!) so anywho i finallllllllly got my paycheck yesterday so ive decided to be a good girl and get my bike fixed this month and save allll my money…. then next month ill go get my ipod fixed…. and then in august ill buy my guitar… my guitar has been pushed along since december 2008 so whats another couple of months to wait right?? wrong… i want that so badly cuz ive been itching to learn and keep myself busy…. because ME. I feel like frickin Bella from Twilight. I unintentionally attract trouble. She attracts vampires and werewolves and wars between the paranormal… whereas I attract psychos and losers, biatches, betraying friends and not-so-impressed annoyed family members who have a problem with evvvvvvverything i do!!! grrrrrr…. I have decided that I’m  done with friendship. Im seriously done with it. f*ck friendship. It just leads to disappointment. The people i have in my life right now are good enough for me. whatever their faults whatever their weaknesses whatever their f*ckups they still care enough to call once in a while and make me feel good. but even those people I keep some sort of distance from and guard my heart… from breaking into any more pieces.  hmmm i think i’m done venting now… but im still super stressed cuz i have to meet my cousin today…. she’s one of the best things in my life… but when she wants to talk… it means somethings up that’s not good…. and i hate confrontations…. i guess i know the outcomes and possibilities to what she probably wants to talk to me about so its not like im going into pitch darkness but still…. ugh…. why cant life be simple and boring again!!!! i guess i should be considerate to myself and be honest about the fact that i did have one good thing happen this week. It was my friend S’s bday… and so the eve of her bday we decided to go for a movie and we wanted to see a chick flick…Bride Wars with Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson and it was reallllllllllly reallllllllly good!!!

all the wedding stuff was breathtaking and romantic and adorably fun to watch….it was like really nice eyecandy but nothing to do with seeing a hot guy…. it was more like hot wedding dresses, and hot wedding shoes, and hot wedding themes, and hot wedding everything!! And it was funny too… My friend and I laughed our guts off and it was such a cute ending…. and the soundtrack was good too (already have it downloaded) it was even funnier because most of the people in the theatre werent laughing at all the cracks and jokes throughout the movie cuz they didnttttttt understandddddddddddddd…. like there was this scene where Kate Hudson’s hair turns blue and she’s really upset cuz her weddings a week away… and shes crying about it to her fiance and her fiance says ‘well you know honey it’s kinda growing on me, i love you in whatever way you look like and i feel like im with a really hot smurf!” and my friend and i burst out laughing…. and everyone else was like huh? what are they laughing at… dumbassses who’ve never seen the Smurfs cartoon show before… haha, i remember watching that in daycare before i even started kindergarten…

anyways all you chick flick lovers out there, gooooo seeee this movieeee!!!!! ok…. i gtg…. hopefully i come on here next to tell you a more happier nicer week in my life and tell you bout how good everything is… this light is turned off…

Currently listening to Dream (Bride Wars OST)
A Good Day
By Priscilla Ahn