I’m driving back from picking up the Aurelia at my apartment, and saying one last goodbye.

Walking through a day after moving, I’m struck by the sense of the space being a clean slate. Not devoid of my presence but cleansed of a lot of stuck energy that got in the way of seeing or appreciating my life. Just walking through the rooms, this wide open space of the living room, it feels like you can breathe in here. Like you can relax…in a way that I couldn’t breathe and relax up until or even including yesterday…just being surrounded by all of my life and who I’ve been got in the way somehow. Oddly, I almost feel like I could now reoccupy this space in a completely new way, having cleared it of everything, and just start over, here.  I don’t think it would last…as soon as I put one thing in this apartment it would become somewhat constrained again.  So when I came in, I felt that…that clean quality. And that sense of open possibility. And then I started to cry…well no actually I felt that sense of clean possibility and then I felt like dancing in response to it, so I was twirling in the living room – it’s a really big room, you could hold a ballet class in it for 10 ppl, well maybe five ppl…but it’s 22′ long and 11′ wide, so I was just spinning back and forth and just enjoying the energy of space as well as the energy of all the good things that happened here. And then I leaned against the windowsill and I started to cry, because I hadn’t been able to recognize any of that when I was living here.

When I was driving down I was picturing my place and I had this funny thought, wouldn’t it be amazing if I walked in and all of my stuff was back where it had been; I don’t mean stuff stuff, but that my bed was in my bedroom and it was made, with the blanket I like, and my desk was there and my books were there, and my living room had a sofa again, and the rug, and the table.  I guess that’s the sense of loss that seems inescapable, as much as I recognize its necessity.  I don’t see it as a ‘wrong’, it’s just part of the process. Often when I’ve purged stuff I’ve felt liberated, lighter. But I think I’m still in the shadow of losing my parents last year, so it’s just not as satisfying at the moment.  But I also wonder how much of it has to do with my age and my circumstances now at 45 as opposed to 25 or 35.  A sense of not having fulfilled certain aspirations and making up for that with having collected and documented things and experiences and put them in boxes that now are occupying a 10×10 storage unit in Kinderhook.  After all, the clean slate, the sense of having tamed something – it’s really just been condensed into a small storage room. Whenever that storage room is liberated then all that attachment energy will be flying out like the ghosts in Ghostbusters.

I took the Aurelia. and it’s heavy…it’s not a tree, but it’s a tall Aurelia, and I opened the front door that swings on its great powerful hinge, trying to carry this thing out at waist level and the door slams on the top of the branches of the Aurelia, and chops them off. So it’s now a full foot shorter…and I am horrified, and I apologized to the plant, and I open the door again to pick up the leaves and there’s a huge pile of leaves and branches and I’m thinking oh God, the poor thing, I should have let them take it in the truck yesterday instead of in a CAR for two hours, at least it would have been standing. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Driving back now, my mind prods me about my meeting on Monday to explore the position I may fill at Karme Choling in the fall.  I’ve hardly had time to consider or prepare for it. Playing in my head is the conversation about my motivation to be there.  I have so many aspirations for my time…there and on some level my time left on earth. For discovering who I am, rather than who I feel I’ve been pretending to be. Doing that through writing, art, practice. To have space and time.  Developing a deeper commitment to practice, and teaching, developing skill at conveying the very profound teachings I have received to people who can really use that in their lives. But there is a feeling of wanting all of it to be a space for me to explore on my own terms, and the idea that I am also going there to give myself and my talents to the place, and all the joy, gift, and surprise that will arise from that has not been at the forefront of my mind. I’m keenly aware that my intention is to find a way to be out in the world – not in a comfortable, secluding, non-speedy place. Which is not what Karme Choling is at all – if anything it’s a supremely challenging place – I expect to continually be ushered into discomfort, exposure, awkwardness.  That is part of how it works on you to be there.  Which is why I think it will lead to learning how to be in the world as my genuine self, unafraid of being foolish, making mistakes; and better able to affect the lives of others. And to be recognized, to know what impact I have made to some degree.  This last part squeaks a little; the desire to be recognized is a kind of doubt, a wrinkle in developing the confidence that is actually inherent. We have to start somewhere, though, so here’s where I am.

The last 9 years I’ve been engaged in the spiritual path in Shambhala have at times been quite isolating, a way to hide from what I don’t understand or want to relate with, even as the process of engaging in a wisdom practice forces one to be exposed and vulnerable.  Day to day I feel such a tendency to focus on the “me project” but that burns itself out when faced with how little that has accomplished in the past.   The driver to benefit others has to come about from within,  it doesn’t really work any other way.