Goenka, Service and the Rainbow Path

 Three weeks of Goenka! Ten days of service, followed by a ten day retreat (my second). Or, to put it another way, physical boot camp followed by spiritual boot camp. I have broken it into two blog posts. Here’s the first: 

The Rainbow Path

“If it seems disorganized, that’s because it is!”

With those disarming words, Roger, project manager for the eight day service period, filling in for the “real” manager who was recovering from pneumonia, read off the tasks for the day.

In my last personal blog, weeks ago now, I wrote about how I discovered that, for the past 58 years, two characters I called Happy Ali and The Worm have run the show called Alison. They are both very, very young and as a result, they are tireless people pleasers, desperate for approval. They are also worn out! It felt long overdue for an adult to step up to the plate, so I made the drastic move of resigning from my many volunteer jobs with Long Beach Meditation to break the pattern. (Just this week I bumped into a parent from my daughter’s elementary school days some 15 years ago, whose first words were, “Are you still volunteering as much as you used to?” It is a very old pattern.) I had no idea what would happen next, but I thought if I took myself far away, beyond communication with the outside world, LBM would have to manage without me, and I wouldn't be able to change my mind. The irony that I chose to go somewhere far away and serve was not lost upon me.

I went to Goenka’s California Vipassana Center in North Fork in the foothills of the Sierras for this adventure. Although the center at Joshua Tree is nearer and brand new, I prefer trees and green to desert, and I thought North Fork in the early spring would be beautiful. (It was). I had signed up for the between courses service period, which meant maintenance work around the property. I had no idea what this might entail, but was willing to do whatever was needed. I’d had a moment's pause when they emailed me a list of possible skills – was I handy with a chainsaw? - but thought I could do something organizational in the office. They had just wrapped up their first thirty-day retreat and not many people were around.

In fact, there were precisely two volunteers that first day: a 19-year-old willowy yoga teacher named Colby from Santa Cruz - and me. I asked Colby if she was at the university in Santa Cruz. “No,” she said with a big smile,  “I’m on the Rainbow Path.” Colby was young and beautiful and could say something like this and get away with it. There were also a handful of men, long-term servers, who'd been living on the property for a period of months. Most days brought new volunteers, and what tasks were assigned depended on who showed up with what skills. I kept making the mistake of waiting to hear all the jobs on offer before raising my hand, sure somehow that the best would be saved for last. This was rarely the case.

They had had a month of severe winter storms: snow, rain, fierce winds. It took five men with chainsaws working daily for a week to clear some of the fallen trees. Therefore, the primary concern was removing tree limbs (a fire hazard) and fixing the gullies and potholes in the roads worn down by the rain, all before the next ten day course started the following week.

Because of my desire to hold out for the good job, young strong yoga teacher ended up staining a few half doors, nicely laid flat on trestles, while I worked with the guys, clearing brush and forking gravel. That first day my comfort zone was left far, far behind. I learned to drive a golf cart. I (tried to) dig out the very deep roots of three established bushes. I backed the most enormous truck I have ever seen in my life downhill while the chap on it pitched gravel from its bed into the deep ditches along the side of the road. (Just getting into that thing was like heaving myself onto the back of a really tall horse, without benefit of stirrups. I wondered, is it possible to pull off a steering wheel?). I almost got sent off in that truck by myself to pick up a load of gravel – the only thing that squelched that idea was that I was too short to actually see out of the mirrors. But how exhilarating! I loved that there was no sense of ‘Well, here’s a fat old bag, obviously out of shape, hm, what can we fob off on her?’ No! It was, ‘Here is a body, with arms and legs that seem to work – great! Go dig a drainage ditch!’ How could I not rise to these gloriously outrageous expectations?

All the same, I was delighted to hear, in the afternoon of that first day, that more help had arrived in the form of Jane from the Bay Area, her Persian friend Ramen (“like Ramen noodles,” said Jane, “but pronounced Rameen”), Leora from Israel and Sung Yee from Taiwan. The first three were in their late 20’s; Sung Yee was 60 and had a herniated disc so she did get that office job I’d hoped was out there. I was a bit (!) envious of this until someone said, “You must have been so glad you didn’t have a herniated disc and you could go out there and do the heavy physical work.” I hadn’t considered it like that at all, but when you think about it, well, of course!

Wonder why there are no buildings numbered 4 - 9?

I did pull one lucky job, inspecting fire extinguishers - did you know a certain type of wasp likes to fill up the open ends of extinguisher hoses with mud? First I had to locate the extinguishers, (there were 42 and I had a map), then check the hoses and cover them with tin foil. This was a very nice job that took all morning, wandering all over the property with a clipboard.  

Any time anyone was at a loose end, there was always brush clearance. The lovely Colby, having stained the doors, had a brief taste of brush clearance and cleared herself out while we were at the afternoon meditation, leaving a note saying she wasn't quite in the right head space to do this work at this time... In my head space, I was indignant: how could she leave when there was so much to be done and we were so short-handed?!! But I was ashamed of myself when I heard the others, genuinely sorry that she'd left and assigning no judgment or blame. Leora said matter-of-factly that it was good that she left if it wasn’t working for her. And the people in charge took pains to tell us to rest if we were feeling overwhelmed. I recognized my own sense of duty would not have allowed me to contemplate leaving even if I had wanted to, which I didn’t. But if the Rainbow Path means listening to yourself and honoring yourself, then good for Colby!

I loved the rhythm of these working days and had hopes of following a similar schedule when I got back home. (Still working on that). 

6 - 7                     Meditation

7 - 7:30                Breakfast

7:30 -                   Meeting to assign tasks

8:00 - 11:30/12     Work

11:30/12 - 2          Lunch and Rest

2 - 3                     Meditation

3 - 5:30                Work

6 - 7                     Dinner

7 - 8                     Meditation, followed sometimes by a movie

10 pm                   Lights out and total collapse

The idea was six hours of work per day, plus three hours of meditation which everyone had to do - I loved seeing the carpenter, the brush clearers, the cooks, everyone, drop everything three times a day and go sit. There was the sense that the sitting was the real work – everything else was just stuff that had to be done. (I must confess I had a hard time staying awake during the sits, especially the afternoon and evening ones, after all that physical labor. One time I tried kneeling and almost fell flat on my face).

But back to the chores: there was no sense that this is how it's done. I struggle with control (who doesn't) and have been convinced most of my life that there is only one way to do things - mine. Yet here, total novices that we were, we were shown a task and then left to our own devices to figure it out as best we could. And like you read about in those very progressive schools, after some time of standing about looking at the problem, someone would take the initiative and without any fanfare, the thing would get done. And however it was done, the results were received with gratitude. I mentioned this to Nick, the kitchen manager who appeared a couple of days before the ten day began. He was exceptionally low-key and easy-going, which is something in a place where everyone is low-key and easy-going. He shrugged, “Short of someone setting the place on fire, everything is pretty much okay.” Oh! To be open like that and truly let it all go! I saw how my own need for rules and direction and constant reassurance -  “Is this all right? Is this how you do it?” - kept surfacing. I saw how scared I am to experiment and take chances. How hard I am on myself for fear of getting it wrong. Seeing how much all that worry is tied in to a sense of self, and how much it doesn't matter, was tremendously liberating. 

We had a jolly teacher named Greta, who sat with us at most meals and led the meditations. One day she inquired what we'd been up to, having noticed the little red pickup truck going up and down the hill all morning. I told her: we picked up branches, stacked them onto the truck to a tottering height, drove (though not by me – why did I never learn to drive a stick-shift?) to a disused airstrip on the property, and unloaded. Then we picked up rocks - big ones! - from same airstrip, drove back to the road leading up to the property, heaved the stones into the ditches created by rain, picked up another load of branches. The whole routine was horribly quick, it only took about fifteen minutes, which meant many, many trips could fit into a day. It was a bit like that awful fairy tale where the miller's daughter has to separate feathers. An impossible task, in other words, given that every night more branches would topple. Sometimes whole trees toppled, the work of the cute little ground squirrels, undermining the roots with their burrows. The work therefore was never-ending.

Greta listened in growing horror and told me to speak up and refuse these jobs, but I didn't. The outer mirrored the inner: I was there to clear out old patterns and move the brush and rocks of the mind, and that work is never-ending too. I loved the symbolism.

The day after Colby left, Greta intervened and asked Roger to give us a later start so we could have a bit of a rest. He picked me up in the truck on the way back from the meditation hall that morning and outlined his plan: we would rest till 10, and then – we’d tarmac the road! Greta roared with laughter when she heard this – he'd kept quiet about the tarmac.

And that’s how we, Jane, Leora and I - "the girls" - became Road Crew and fixed potholes. This was easily the most exciting job ever. We got to wear special clothes from the dress-up trunk of work clothes: Leora and I wore matching red plaid shirts and blue jeans, all spattered with paint from other messy projects, while Jane found a white lab coat and looked like some sort of mad scientist. We wore big rubber boots and straw hats. You can imagine, we were a vision.

Monster Truck

Leora, the youngest and strongest, stood on the back of the monster truck, a Ford something-or-other, turbo-charged, shoveling the tarry stuff over the edge, while Jane and I raked and tamped. Jane raked lovingly and carefully, like a chef icing a cake. I tamped like I was unblocking a particularly stubborn toilet. Great for getting rid of aggression! 

Road Crew days were the two days that week when the temperature suddenly rocketed into the 90's. That first day was such a novelty we actually volunteered to do it again the next day. But Day 2 was not so fun - more like hot, sweaty drudgery. Finally, "I don't want to play Road Crew any more," I said, and the others took pity on the old lady and let me loiter by the side of the road. There was so much tar! Two tons in two days! By the end we were inventing holes just to get rid of the stuff. Roger said, “Think of the poor people who have to do this as their livelihood, day after day.” Once again, those poor people hadn't crossed my mind, I was much too busy thinking about this fat and winded old body and what did she think she was playing at?

What was I playing at? It was surely not random that I had chosen to come to this beautiful place, after having thrown myself out of my comfortable nest, unsure what to do next. It was not chance that surrounded me with three strong women, each one leading an rich and unconventional life. Colby’s Rainbow Path! 

Leora was 28 and had never been to college. But she had taken numerous Open University classes, was widely traveled, had spent months in Nepal teaching at a local school. She had been in the States since January and was bravely traveling by herself, couch-surfing and following her nose and her interests. After the service period, she was going with Jane and Ramen to Yosemite and from there she was talking of going up to Oregon to visit a bee farm. Her only firm plan was to return to the East Coast in the summer to work on a boat out of Cape Cod as a volunteer - counting fish! Leora was cheerful, curious about everything and full of energy. She even climbed up on the roof to learn all about sump pumps. She found everything interesting. 

Sung Yee was 60 years old, a widow, afraid she had wasted her life and that she was running out of time. So with her new freedom, she sold the family home and used the money she would have spent on rent to travel to someplace far away and work for a charity organization.  In this way she could see the world and help at the same time. She'd just come back from six months in Africa working at setting up a Buddhist school for HIV orphans. She had hopes of doing similar jaunts to India and the Middle East. She had written four books already, donating the royalties to charities, and planned to write about all her experiences. She was quick and bright, and seemed much younger than her 60 years. 

Jane was 30 and reminded me of my own daughter with her glasses and her quiet manner and her studious demeanor. I thought for sure she at least had some sort of career. We had a chance to talk one afternoon after digging that drainage ditch (!). I asked her what did she do, and she replied, straight-faced, "I'm on the Rainbow Path too." We collapsed laughing and then had a very serious conversation about what that meant. What I understood, from her, from Leora and from Sung Yee, was this determination not to settle, not to do the thing society expects of you "just because." All three had in common a boundless curiosity, a big appetite for life, and a strong spiritual inclination. (In order to serve, everyone has to have completed one ten day course. Jane had done three.)

I asked Jane whether this path was hard? She said yes, very. That she was a person who liked to draw up tables of pros and cons and spreadsheets and to-do lists, but that every time she used her mind to plan her life in this way, it just evaporated to nothing. It took her several years after college to come to terms with her lifestyle and be okay with not knowing how it was going to turn out. She said the biggest critical voice was her own. At one point she decided to go to law school to please her mother, "so that at least one of us would be happy with me" - and she dove into researching the LSat and law schools until she came to her senses and thought, "What am I doing?!! I hate law!!" From that point on, she was able to relax into the not-knowing, no longer afraid to make mistakes, opening herself to experience and not saying no to life. At least she knew what she didn't want to do.

Over the course of the next few days, I mulled this over. We yearn for security and stability – yet there is none. So is it possible to know this and still thrive? It is, of course, people do manage it. But could I do it? Am I too old to think this way for myself? It is after all as true for me as for anyone. The thing that was lovely about Jane was that I could ask her a question out of context and she immediately understood and so we had a single conversation that strung itself out over several days. For example, I asked her how did she know in what direction to turn? She said, "Pay attention to the things that shine for you. We tend to ignore them, thinking they must shine for everyone just as they do for us, and so we miss the fact that they are special to us. They are little clues about who we really are." We were allowed to sit in the newly built Pagoda for that 2pm sit. The Pagoda was a beautiful building full of little meditation cells. 

The Pagoda

A cell in the Pagoda

Sung Yee tried it and hated it: So dark! No windows! Like being in a closet! Jane tried it and liked it for all those same reasons: she felt completely alone with herself and loved it. I tried it and promptly fell asleep, propped up against the wall in the dark. So it’s not the case that everything you like, others like. And that’s important to know.

One morning walking down the road with Jane from the meditation hall, there was a particularly sweet burst of birdsong. I asked her, "Do you know the name of that bird?" And she replied, "I was just thinking of the Tao of Pooh, and how he tells Piglet not to bother with the names of things but just to enjoy them... that's what I was thinking right before you asked me 'what is the name of the bird?'" Another time I asked if she knew the name of the white flowers that grew on slender stalks by the thousands in the meadow. “I call them Heaven,” she said. Jane was very wise.

For three nights in a row, after the evening meditation, we watched what Leora called our Prison Trilogy - three films about Vipassana meditation as it's been taken into the prisons: one in India, a men's facility in Alabama "Dhamma Brothers", and a women's prison in Washington State. It was especially moving to see the violent criminals (the men in Alabama are mostly in for life with no chance of parole) come around through meditation to the experience of accepting responsibility for the way their lives had played out. Instead of throwing blame and hostility out onto the world, they were looking inwards for the first time and sometimes finding compassion for themselves in there too.

The Saturday after we did road crew for two days in a row, Roger announced we were going to have a day of rest. This was unheard of, but as Roger said, "Not every service period has a road crew." Better yet, he was going to take us off-property on a hike to a waterfall; and first we would stop in at North Fork and see what sort of celebrations were going on for Earth Day. A field trip! We went in two cars, men in one, me driving the women in the other; it wasn't planned like that, but we were too many to fit in one car and we were used to being separated by then and so naturally it fell about that way. (We worked together, but mealtimes, meditation and our sleeping quarters were segregated). 

First, the North Fork festivities (a brief stop - North Fork is really very tiny and not much was going on: a rummage sale, a few booths, a little band;  I was impressed they'd made the effort).  Then we drove along twisty forest roads to the waterfall. It was a fairly strenuous hike, spectacular, if rather scary - one slip and you'd be over the edge - but so lovely: different colored lichen on the rocks, the cooling mist from the 50’ falls, surrounded by pine trees and manzanitas and other trees I can’t name. I rested and wrote in my journal all afternoon (the usual restrictions about reading and writing are off when you're serving, although reading material is limited to the dharma books they have in their own library). That evening we watched the last of the Prison Trilogy about the Dhamma Brothers, and to finish off an amazing day, Leora, excited as a puppy, woke Sung Yee and me up at 4 a.m. and the three of us crept out to lie on our backs on a huge flat rock beyond the women's buildings to watch a rare meteor shower.

The meteor shower of April 2012

There was a possibility of hundreds – we saw seven and were thrilled. Sung Yee said, "I can't remember the last time I got up in the middle of the night just to look at the sky!" So companionable it was, looking up together at the black sky filled with stars, and watching as the grey light of dawn crept up from around the sides, like a circle, getting smaller and smaller, until there were just a handful of stars left that we could count one by one.

The service period ended officially on Monday, but of course I was there until the new course began on Wednesday. Sung Yee had a chance of a ride back to Sacramento Monday morning so she jumped at that - it would save her hours on the buses; the others left on Tuesday. Once Sung Yee vacated the office, I got my wish to do office work. Only I had to laugh: my task was to catalog five bins worth of electrical stuff, adaptors, wires with prongs, things whose use I couldn't even guess at, much less name, things that had something to do with the AV system, or possibly computers, or maybe cell phones. Once again, like picking up the branches, the task was hopeless. I'm good with words, only I had no words to do this job. My words were useless. I figured it was a foreshadowing of the next half of this experience, the silent retreat, where words would also be useless.

While I was puzzling over this new and awful job, my three young friends, Leora, Ramen and Jane, came to say goodbye en route to Yosemite. They stood at the bottom of the steps to the little office bungalow and stretched out their arms to me - no physical contact is allowed on site - they called out, "We've come to give you virtual hugs!"

I wrote later that evening:

“…it occurred to me that I was in fact old enough to be their mothers - funny, because I felt not any age with them. But there it is - I stood at the top of the steps and felt like the Mother Pig in the Three Little Pigs, sending her children out into the world." For once, I caught myself in the act of telling myself a story: 

"No, I didn’t. That’s how I interpret it now, hours after the fact. At the time it was nothing of the sort. It was just goodbye and that was enough. No story!! Isn’t that what I am here to learn? To drop the story and see reality as it is, not good, not bad, but constantly changing. It becomes good and bad when we want things to be otherwise. And we always want things to be otherwise!”

On Wednesday, Day Zero, hours before registration for the ten day would begin, that nervous back-to-school feeling in the air (and in my stomach), I said to Greta, "I hope I've been a good service person." So often I'd felt I wasn't strong enough or skilled enough to be of any real use. She shocked me by saying, "I loved you the best." "Why?!" "Because you didn't run away!" That was cheering and would prove useful to remember in the days ahead. (I realize only now as I write this that once again, I was seeking validation - 'Did I really do a good job? Tell me how good I was!' I mean, what could she possibly say? "No, you were crap?" Perhaps one day I will catch myself before opening my mouth...** I am reading this to my husband who has just pointed out that my putting this anecdote in here in the first place is ALSO making it all about me. 'See how special I am. I didn't run away!' I am leaving it in, even though I am quite mortified, to show how completely unconscious we are - all right, I am - of these things that run us. Me.)

Greta joked that I would blog about this service period and no-one would ever come help again. I hope that’s not the case! I hope it is obvious that Old Students are needed and welcomed, whatever their abilities, for however much time they can spare: a single day, a weekend – really, anything is received with such gratitude: the maintenance is ongoing and it’s a very big property. It is also gob-smackingly beautiful, which doesn't hurt.

Now I am home again. What was the take-away from that time to myself? Since the mind that thinks is often ten steps behind whatever it is that really decides what's going on, I hesitate to put into words what is still unfolding. But perhaps that is in itself the gift of the Rainbow Path. A letting go of plans and an idea that "I" have control over any of it. I think of Roger's words, "If it seems inefficient, that's because it is!" Yet, everything that needed to get done, got done. Without stress and without worry. Imagine that! I couldn't have fathomed it beforehand, I was filled with anxiety about the future. I learned that the great thing about hard physical labor is that it focuses the chattering, obsessive, worrying mind simply on what needs to be done at that moment. That is good to know. A huge, huge plus was I hadn’t anticipated working with such lovely people, genuinely good and patient and kind and bright. They taught me about the Rainbow Path when I needed it most.

I read a book of reflections while I was a server and copied out several. Here’s one that I found especially fitting:

"If you can't do the right thing

or don't know what the right thing is,

simply do the next thing - 

with as much clarity, gentleness and kindness

as you can muster...

and then forgive yourself

when you are dead wrong!"

And one night, half dead with fatigue (a good moment to write, the ego is practically asleep), I wrote, not quite knowing what it means:

"We must bear witness. We must witness. Be aware, pay attention, listen to each other and bear witness."

So do what presents itself, one step at a time, and say yes to it all... 

And keep meditating. It is the key.

P.S.

 I think little kids know all about the Rainbow Path. This is the first drawing my daughter Helen ever drew for her Dad, when she was three years old. She told him it was a rainbow. I love that she drew it on a memo from Sea World - See World.Yes!!

A Visit with Ruth Denison

Ruth Denison, 88,  in 2010

 Ruth Denison is one of the pioneers of Vipassana meditation in the West. She was authorized to teach back in the 70's by the Burmese Theravada master, U Ba Khin, who chose her as one of only four Western Dharma-heirs (and the only woman). Another was Mr. Goenka, of the ten-day silent meditation retreat fame. Still going strong at age 90, she is coming to speak this Sunday at Long Beach Meditation. She was actually invited two years ago, when Victor was on retreat in Lumbini. I volunteered to drive to her retreat center in the desert and pick her up and keep her overnight, but the visit was cancelled due to her having broken her shoulder. In April 2010, my husband and I were visiting friends in Palm Desert and I got the bright idea to drop in. This is the record of that little field trip from 7th April, 2010:

                                                    *************************

I visited Ruth Denison yesterday! I thought it a shame to be so close and not pay my respects, especially since we had that slender connection of would-be driver and host had she come in March as planned, to speak to LBM. I phoned Tuesday and asked if it would be possible to come say hello since I was in the area, and whoever I spoke with passed on the word and called back a few hours later and said yes, come tomorrow; Ruth has visitors all day today, but they should be leaving tomorrow and she's always up for meeting new people. We arranged I would come between two and three Wednesday afternoon.

Before we left, I checked her website and found a list of things you could bring as a visitor - I wrote them down carefully and promptly forgot the list so had to rely on memory and ended up with bizarre offerings: biodegradable washing powder, Throat Coat tea bags, white vinegar, plus four pounds of strawberries, a KitKat bar and a hunk of smoked cheese for treats. Husband John and dog Snuffy came with me, which was just as well, because above Joshua Tree, you turn off onto rutted dirt roads and I needed a navigator. For all that, it was easy to find, if jarring to drive. Signs began to appear to 'Vipassana' which led us to an outcropping of little houses and huts and odd structures for dogs, stony stupas and Buddhas dotted among the scrawny shrubs and cacti. The place had that deserted air of nobody home - and sure enough there was a note on the door: 'Alison! Ruth and friends have gone out. Make yourself at home. They'll be back shortly.' So we found the outhouses (yay!) and a couple of chairs in the sun and settled in for a wait. It was very windy, and it was hard to tell what was wind, what was airplane or car. Not that there were many planes or cars going by - we were in the back of beyond. Nothing to do but wait. Very peaceful.

We arrived at two. Exactly at three, a big old station wagon pulled up: Ruth and friends. The car seemed stuffed with people: two young Asian girls, a German woman who spoke not a word of English, a Frenchwoman called Katerina and Ruth, who was fast asleep in the back, leaning against the window. I gently opened the door and she woke up instantly, instantly alert too, which was impressive. She bounded out of the car, wearing black stretch pants, a red woolly jacket, colorful sneakers and a beige woolly hat with a huge spider pin on it. You would never guess she is 87 or had ever broken a bone. She looked at me and said, "I am very tired, maybe this was not a good time." I said, "Would you like us to go?" She said, "Give me a few minutes, talk to Katerina..." 

She disappeared into her little hut with the KitKat in her pocket - the other supplies followed the German lady into the kitchen. John took himself around the corner with his book, Snuffy went back in the car and Katerina and I sat in the sun. She was fascinating, this Frenchwoman, slim, elegant, long white hair in a pony tail, one of Goenka's first 15 students back in India in the 70's. Shortly after India, she heard of Ruth and invited her to her house in France to lead a retreat, one of the first Ruth ever led; it sounded like a crazy wonderful time, people sleeping on the floor in this rustic farmhouse in the Pyrenees, come for the teachings of this extraordinary woman... Katerina lost touch with Ruth for some 20 odd years, until five years ago, she was speaking with a Buddhist nun in London and mentioned Ruth's name, who said, "Yes, I know Ruth, I've just come back from a retreat she gave five days ago in the Californian desert!" And Katerina has been coming every April since for the last four years.

At this point Ruth appeared like a tiny little sprite, quick and efficient, and ushered Katerina and me into her little house. We went through her study and her bedroom to a covered porch in the back. She told us to wait, we would see something we had never seen before in our lives. She was right too! A roadrunner came right to the door of her room, demanding food. She gave it a ball of ground beef and it raced away, just like the cartoon. She feeds it a pound of ground beef a week. 

Then we went out on the porch and Ruth fussed over the seating arrangements - we had to be just so, me in a plastic garden chair, Katerina on a cushion on the floor - while Ruth darted about feeding the animals. This porch overlooked a garden fenced in with a low wire fence. Beyond it were more of the scrubby little bushes, more little rock piles and bowls artfully strewn about. Ruth threw birdseed everywhere, and filled an old saucepan with cooked rice then sat in her seat to my left and told us to be still and be quiet and wait and watch. And the animals came! It was 4 o'clock and that's their feeding time. First the little birds, then the bigger ones - quails with their funny little topknots; a rabbit with translucent ears and masses of cute little mice-y things - they were the size of mice but had much prettier tails, more like chipmunks. One of them dived into that bowl of rice and took out a lump bigger than its own head and tottered away with it.  She said, "Why would I want a television when I have this to watch?" I nodded agreeably, to which she said a little sternly, "There is nothing bad about television. There is nothing BAD about anything, as long as you are aware of what you are doing."

Time passed in this way - time being a very loose concept in Ruth's world: she had no clue about date or day although she did know that it was time to feed the animals. She expressed fatigue again, and talked about these annoying people who came back to her three times with questions after she had dismissed them. I told her that when she had had enough of me, she would have to tell me directly to leave, because I was very bad at picking up subtle clues. 

She said, "Well, we eat at five. You and your husband will eat with us and then you will leave." 

I thanked her for the invitation, but said our friends in Palm Springs were expecting us for supper, so we would leave at five. 

"That makes our life easier!" she said. She sent Katerina to the kitchen to tell these plans to the cook, and announced she would show me around. 

First though, she apologized for not coming to talk to us at LBM. It wasn't that she broke her shoulder - it was that she had scheduled a retreat in March that she had completely forgotten about. Her arm is much better now, although she has some arthritis in the shoulder. She said she would like to come sometime to 'redeem' herself. I said that wasn't necessary, although we would love to have her and she just had to say the word and I'd come get her.  She wanted to know what we were doing in Long Beach, was Victor back? She said he had amazing rhythm, he could make music out of anything: "give him two rocks and he could create a tango!"  I said our sangha meets every Sunday, and on Wednesdays too, to study. I told her we'd read the Satipatthana - "a good place to start"; and that we were just finishing up Victor's book. She looked puzzled - Victor's book? I said it was online, and it covered the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold path - thank god we memorized it, because later she took me to see the Eightfold path painted symbolically on a wall and I had to tell her what each picture stood for. Sitting still on her porch, she spoke eloquently and off the cuff about Right Thought versus Right Intention. I had my notebook and couldn't stand not writing it down. I asked if she could repeat what she had just said; Katerina shook her head at me: "She never says it again," she whispered. But she did, and in even more detail. Here is what she said:

"Some people call Right Thought, Right Intention. What is the real interpretation of Right Thought? Right Intention has to have Right Thought before. When you say you want to do something, how can you know it's right? Know your thought - am I angry, do I think I am right, am I being self-righteous - all these are not Right Thought. How do you factor in Right Intention? I try, I investigate my thought, but it has to be more investigated. The Second Factor of Enlightenment is Right Investigation. If you have good intention, you must investigate it. The thought I have will lead me to more anger, more opinion, and then I am stuck. If we use BOTH terms, Right Intention and Right Thought, we can ask ourselves, where is this leading to, this action, where do you intend it to go? It is an issue to investigate - then you get to Right Thought more safely. You cannot justify much when you see have Right Intention but did not have enough contemplation. For example, you have a friend who invites you to go to the bar with him. You say, why not, it will be fun, we'll live it up. Only your friend drinks too much, he comes home and picks a fight and it ends badly - just as it always does when you go out with this friend because he always drinks too much and it always ends badly. You did not fully investigate the effect of karmic reaction: 'when I go with my friend whom I like, I am easily enthusiastic, and I don't give much thought to where this is leading.' So intention is good, but it needs investigating." (Katerina threw in the proverb, 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' which is the same in French and which Ruth liked a lot: it illustrated this point very nicely).

Then Katerina went off on her errand to the cook and Ruth like a child showed me her place. "Here is where the dog sleeps, here is where I sleep, here is my closet, here are my clothes, here is my bathroom, these are my drawers, my things..." I was very moved by this tour. She was so open and guileless. "Look at what I have." She found an unopened package by her desk; she looked at the return address and shrugged, not recognizing the name. Then she shook the box and said quietly, "Sometimes they send me cookies." We walked all around outside, I soon learned I had to be on my toes: when we passed more of the little stone stupas and she said "Isn't it nice?" and I agreed, yes it was nice, sharply she said, "Did you see the Buddha?" Crap! Where was the Buddha?!! I spotted him, but several beats too late and got a slap on the wrist for it: "We say too quickly, "oh! this is nice!" and we haven't looked properly, we don't see anything, we miss everything! Look again!" After that I didn't say a word, and looked around like mad, trying to notice everything. I felt like I could be quizzed on any old random thing. Bit nerve-wracking! Do you know, sometimes she is up there completely alone? I thought there was always someone there, but that's not the case. And it's a big property. And miles from anywhere. And in need of a handy man!!

She has a funny little dog called Bingo, a Boston terrier with one blue and one brown eye. He belonged to a woman Ruth sat with when she died. He was badly treated and misbehaved. But after his owner died, he crept out from under the bed and fixed Ruth with his strange little eyes as if to say, 'What will become of me?' So, as she told me, what choice did she have but to take him? 

Katerina came out to find us, it being well past five o'clock by now, the Asian girls loitering hungrily around their quarters wondering where was dinner? Ruth was unaware of any of it, came to our car and peered in at Snuffy, wanting to know what was wrong with him and saying he's on his way out but liking the way I was treating (read 'spoiling') him. She said, "If you are interested in the teachings, if you are serious about your practice, come to my retreat on the 23rd - it goes on for 10 days? Two weeks?" Everyone was hazy on the details, price, dates, etc. Ruth said, "Come for one day, a weekend, the whole thing, whatever you can manage, it is my hobby and I call it Retreat for Real Life, you come when you can." I asked if it was silent - she said darkly, it was supposed to be, but you couldn't keep a group of women silent, though they were when she told them to be.  She said a bit testily, "I don't know how my retreats here came to be just for women. Anywhere else in the world, they're for men too." She said I could bring Snuffy if I was worried about him - one man came one time with his two cats (!). She said Snuffy was not a problem. 

She offers four retreats a year. Katerina says she is afraid every year it will be the last one, since Ruth has fallen down and broken something every year, for the last few years.  (Ruth had this to say about pain: "Bless your pain. Embrace your pain.") Katerina gave me her address - if ever you're in the South of France and want to meditate -! Hugs all around and we were off, and promptly got lost on those wretched dirt roads. But all was (eventually) well, when we finally found something we recognized as a landmark and we made it back to our friends in Palm Springs just as the oven timer dinged that our supper was ready. 

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Aferword: I never did go on a retreat with Ruth. She was right about Snuffy being on his way out - he died in July 2010. I do know I am lucky to have met her, and feel honored that she spent so much time with me. I'm looking forward to her visit this Sunday (2/26/2012) at Long Beach Meditation. It is anybody's guess what she will do with the two hours at her disposal!

The Joyful and the Worm

Last week, dear Lois of the Cross-Country-Save-The-Pets Odyssey invited me out of the blue to fly to the East Coast next month to celebrate her birthday and mine: if she paid my ticket, would I come? Well, wow!! Would I?!

But something new developed. On the one hand, pure joy at Lois' invitation; on the other, a gnawing, hollow, anxious feeling of "I don't deserve this." As luck would have it, that very same day three of us got together for a practice Voice Dialogue session. I was the last to be facilitated, and my pair of opposites were these two characters: the joyful and the worm. Both of them felt extraordinarily young. Both said they had been with me "forever." There was an interruption during my session, something Martha-Lou had warned us about as being potentially dangerous. I don't know about dangerous, but I did feel somehow split, half the mind tuned deeply inwards, the other listening to doors opening and closing and trying to identify sounds. I felt fragmented and it was a feeling that continued for some days. The presence of the two small children stayed with me: instead of sinking back to wherever they live, they were very much with me at all times, one on either side. I felt I was walking around with my arms around them. A weird feeling.

The next day, I saw HH. I told him about the invitation, my torn feelings and the Voice Dialogue. As a Gestalt therapist, he said, "Let's have them talk to each other here." I was alarmed: in Voice Dialogue the selves don't talk to each other. They don't even know another self exists. He said, rather grimly, "They'll talk with me." I insisted on having the center self present as well: in Voice Dialogue, center is the aware ego; I needed a home base, since both these two were exhausting. They appeared with no trouble at all. Cringing, clinging worm sat to my left, Happy Ali on the right. I sat between them and I could literally feel their presence, these small children, the one pressed up close to me, the other, trying so hard to be cocky and brave, but finally admitting, "I feel as if the sky is falling." I sat between them and mothered them, stroking the fabric of the couch (where I imagined they were sitting) with great tenderness. They cried through me, and I cried for them. As HH said, "All three of you are crying." It was quite a session. What it meant came much later.  I made HH tell me what had happened. He said, "You know what happened." I said, "I know - but she needs to hear it," nodding towards my right. So he addressed that little Ali who has tried so hard all these long years and who now sat there bewildered. What had she done wrong? HH was inspired: he told her, "You're still a part of her. You're not going anywhere. You're the one who can throw a party for forty people with no trouble; you're the one who can cheer people up by making them laugh. She can't do those things. Those things are your gift to her." She smiled then (does it sound mad to talk of 'she' in reference to myself?) and relaxed a little. I said to HH, "Do you remember when I first started coming here, you said I reminded you of the story of Atlas, holding the world on his shoulders? The similarity being that as a child I held my mother on my shoulders, my mother being my world? I feel now as if I have just set the world down. My hands feel so light." It was a cathartic moment. It wasn't that I had set down the burden of cheering up my mother. It was that I had set down the burden of being the Alison who needed to cheer up my mother.

That evening I hosted a meeting at my house. Only a few people from my little sub-committee could come so I had also invited the Advisory Committee. The AC is the committee that does the brunt of the work for Long Beach Meditation. Four people came. Three from my lot: one severely jet-lagged and sleep deprived, one in physical pain, one straight from a long day's work; and one lone member of the AC, up from the desert. Nobody else came from the AC. I was so angry that nobody showed up! Not only that, but nobody had even bothered to RSVP! I thought if THIS group of people can't be bothered to respond or show up, what does that say about the organization? My meeting had nothing to talk about without the others being there. I would have cancelled had I known they wouldn't show up. And so on and so on. Isn't it easy to slip into blame and anger? To get all spitty-faced and self-righteous because after all, look at me, doing the good thing, having my meeting and where were the rest of you... It hit me in the night. Who was it who was getting so bent out of shape? Yet another childish facet, dutiful, responsible, doing everything right according to her sights, in order to be accepted, win a few gold stars, get that pat on the head.

It was all so clear. Who is the one whose hand shoots up to volunteer for any old thing? Nothing is too much trouble, too much work or too time-consuming. And for what? To fill that nagging hole, to silence that wormy voice on the other side, the one that can only cry, "Not good enough!" If I am accepted by the group, better yet, if I make myself indispensable to the group, then I MUST be all right. And all of this chugs along unconsciously, as long as everything goes according to plan. When there's a glitch - when I throw a meeting to which nobody bothers to come, for example, and my reaction is a sort of self-justified muted rage - it becomes glaringly obvious that I have some other agenda going on, some need that isn't being met.

I've been doing this for a very long time. When Victor first invited me to be a member of the AC, my first and honest reaction was to say with a rueful laugh, "But I hate committees!" In the next breath, I hijacked myself with a speedy acceptance, so pleased was I to be a part of the inner sanctum. Thrilled to be chosen, because that must mean I was worth something.

So it has been a hard haul getting to this point two and a half years on. Who wants to admit to themselves that they are not half as good a person as they like to imagine they are? That they have been run for a lifetime by two little kids: one, the pleaser who knows so well how to make herself liked; the other, full of fear, holding all the negativity because the other, so much stronger and  forceful, will allow no part of it in her world.

My first thought was to disband my little committee; my second to detach from the AC. I feel that somehow these two little ones cannot be allowed to run the show anymore - no, 'allowed' is the wrong word. Poor things: they ran it because there was no-one to relieve them of the job. It had worked pretty well, after all - Happy Ali got me a good husband, a beautiful daughter, kind and generous friends, a life with enough leisure time to ponder all of the above. She had no idea that things were not as they appeared on the surface.

The thing is, knowing now what I know, I cannot continue as before. If there is an adult in this house, it is more than time for her to take charge and let those little ones rest. If things carry on as usual, what was the point of all the pain?

Me in my uniform, being cheerful.

Once upon a time, I decided crying served no purpose, sorrow changed nothing, and took a determinedly cheerful route. And at the time, I was absolutely right. I was a child without a voice and there was nothing to be done but make the best of it in the only way I knew how. To make myself be liked, to fit in, and the way to do that was to be happy because "Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone." My motto.  I find it interesting to realize that at boarding school, the place where I had no voice, I who was never sick, was sick at least once a term with tonsillitis. I lost my voice for real and as a result, I got to spend a few days in the Infirmary, being looked after as much as any of us were looked after, by the school nurse/nun. She was not in the least a cuddly nun, being the whitest, palest person I have ever seen, in a white habit yet, but she was a cool, competent grown-up, respected and capable, and I, who yearned to be looked after, at least felt safe if not loved with her.

A card I sent home when I was around 12. Pretty much sums up the way it was for six years of my life. In the picture marked 'change' I am changing my stockings and doing up my suspender, in case you're wondering what that black thing is.

Anyway. If I revert to things as before, then that little girl who had no voice way back then will continue to have no voice at 50 bloody 7. How can I, knowing what I know, go on as before? For all of the four previous Beginners' Courses, I have been there every Sunday from 1 to 5pm, doing the registration, the greeting, taking the form back at the end of the day, updating it on the computer, sending it off to the treasurer, printing it out for the following week. Even when my cousin was here on a once in a lifetime visit from Australia, at the same time as my beloved daughter was down from Berkeley, I made sure I took precious time to do that job. It was my DUTY.

I cannot think of anyone who would do that, everyone else seems to have such clear priorities. How did mine get so skewed? I cringe to remember an incident when Helen was in high school and I was teaching: she scarily fainted twice as we were getting ready to leave the house. I had never seen anyone faint before and it scared me to death. I called the paramedics and even though she had come around, they loaded her in the ambulance to take her to the hospital to find out what was wrong. I went back inside to get ready for school. Minutes passed and the doorbell rang. It was a fireman.

I was surprised they were still there. "Um. We're waiting for you. Are you ready?" he asked. "No, no. You go on ahead," I said, trusting them to do their job. Helen was safe. I had to get to school and arrange my classroom for a sub. THEN I would go to the hospital. When I got to school and told them in the Office what had happened, and the principal asked, "But where is Helen now?" "In the hospital," I said. They practically pushed me out the door to go to her. I remember being confused. Surely doing my DUTY - my teacher job - was more important than being a mommy?
Oh God.

The Oh God comes from this. From right this minute, realizing I have internalized both of my parents' opposing voices, only they are playing from an eerily childish perspective. This is how my priorities got skewed. A common scenario: My mother, shy, bookish, intellectual, hating the superficiality of diplomatic social life, suffering from ferocious migraines, begging my father to be allowed to stay home - or if they had to go to some such cocktail party, that he would promise that they would leave early. Dad, so English, so pragmatic, also sociable and charming, would say in disgust, "Pull yourself together, Maryse!" Showing a rare irritation in his voice, "How can we decide now to come home early? We might be having a lovely time. Why are you always so negative!" And she, with her pain and her migraine, like that was dismissed. She would deflate, literally sag, while he scolded her. She became invisible. And I, the quiet onlooker, Daddy's girl, must have determined in some dim corner of myself, that I would do my duty, I wouldn't let the side down - and there, plucky, cheerful, dutiful, all those things sprang into being to counteract my mother's perceived weakness. So that years and years later, I could abandon my teenage daughter in a screaming ambulance going to who knows where, as she was suffering from who knows what. And abandon her again (along with my cousin) to check in the Beginners' class. I wonder how many times I have abandoned her in this way? As many as my father abandoned my mother, I would imagine.

My volunteering to do it all was part of this 'isn't Alison wonderful' campaign being waged by the little girl. It worked too, didn't it? Except that the approval I was really seeking, my father's, my mother's - ah well, I will never get that, will I? In that last week before my Dad died, he told my sister that she was "the best daughter a man could wish for." I loitered around his bedside, hoping he would tell me I was also a pretty damn good daughter too, but he never said it. Words! He died in my arms, but he never said he loved me. I've been searching for my father's love my whole life. I only found that out today.

It is a terrific joke on the part of the Universe, a masterpiece of timing, that today happens to be the day that my self-appointed father/mother figure, poor long-suffering Victor, is signing the lease on a place in Ojai. Which means he will be dividing his time between Long Beach and Ojai, which is about two hours away. I imagine that he will spend more and more of his time in Ojai, leaving us here to get on with it. To the child - the whole bloody kindergarten in me - this is abandonment all over again, except instead of me being sent away to boarding school, Victor as parent is sending himself away. I thought I was okay with it, had become used to the idea, but for him to be signing the lease on this particular day, in this particular time period, seems especially significant.

In Voice Dialogue, every facilitation is designed to strengthen the aware ego. It is not a place one can live out of, apparently, although one can aspire to. My greatest fear is that here I am, deeply aware of the children who at last see a chance to lay their heads down and rest - and is the adult strong enough to pick up the reins? Am I strong enough? Brave enough? Aware enough? So many years of conditioning to work against. So much easier to say 'stuff it' and go back - only, I can't go back! I see creepy motives behind every little thing I say or do, and where once I thought I was wholly good, now I see how dependent I am on others' good opinion. Most of what I do has the aim of pleasing others. And if it's not forthcoming - look out! Krishnamurti asks if it is possible for us "to live with what we actually are, knowing ourselves to be dull, envious, fearful, believing we have tremendous affection when we have not, getting easily hurt, easily flattered and bored - can we live with all that, neither accepting it nor denying it, but just observing it without becoming morbid, depressed or elated?"

Can we live with all that? Can I? I have no idea. What happens now? I do know that my meditation practice has suddenly received an infusion of energy. Perhaps all that energy I was channeling elsewhere is now available for me to use for my own purposes. I have lost three pounds, after spending weeks and weeks on a gentle gain. I am positive that fat is an excellent defense, a way to feel safe, at least for me. I had a dream at the start of this period, that someone was pushing to get into the house and I was pushing on the door trying to keep them out. Trying to scream to my husband , "Unwelcome intruder!" but I had no voice. And whoever it was, pushing from the other side, was winning. Who was that out there? Was it that poor little disowned self, the little worm? No, it felt big, angry, powerful, but maybe it felt like that because I was so afraid of it. Woke up before I saw what it was, heart pounding, sweaty, nightmare symptoms. Perhaps there is simply something in me pushing to the surface that is saying "Enough! I won't be shut away in the dark any longer!"

Snuffy, Spirit Guide aka Circus Dog

I've been crying a lot. Grieving my Snuffy, my little dog who had to be put down 18 months ago. He was twelve years old, but had been sick for five years with a chronic illness. Back in my twenties, I had a blind psychic friend who told me my spirit guide was a black dog. Somehow I imagined a big dog, like a labrador. A couple of days ago, it occurred to me it could have been a small black fluffy dog; my spirit guide could have been Snuffy. Made me cry. I have not cried for him until now, not once, always managing to say with great common sense, "Well, he was in such a bad way. It would have been one thing if he'd been run over, if he'd been young... but you wouldn't have wanted him to live a minute longer than he did, the way he was." Which are - come to think of it - exactly the same words I have used about my father, wasting away with cancer. I haven't cried for him either, once past the day he died.

Everything is related. Everything repeats, until we get it.

I don't think there is a darn thing I can do about any of it except remain open, inquire into everything and be honest with myself. And start saying no, or at least, "Can I get back to you on that?" That would be a start.

I have faith that it is ultimately good: I created a 'Beyond a Vision Board' just a few short weeks ago in my writing class; it's like a collage filled with images and words that appeal to you right where you are, not aiming at some future time. Mine is filled with images of mothers and children, prayer hands and water, and the words 'Open to Change with Heart' and 'You are You. Whole.'

Whoever that is.

My 'Beyond a Vision Board'

P.S. Writing all this out feels like an enormous weight has dropped away. I thought, if Lois rescinds her invitation, it won't matter, because I have learned so much that I would not have learned otherwise. Instead, today a long phone call followed a flurry of emails and together we booked my flights, made plans, became giddy with excitement. Pure joy and gratitude. No hidden worm.