The Erased Blog and How Loving Yourself Blesses the World

I had written this one blogpost and posted it the day after Thanksgiving.  I loved the post - it felt very satisfying to me, as if I said just exactly what I wanted to say and  I was on the phone with my mom later that evening and we were talking about it.  She said, "I don't think it's as heartfelt as your usual."   (Do you have a mom that just will not sugar coat things for you?  Because mine doesn't.)  Undeterred, I said, "That's so weird.  I loved that one  - it meant a lot to me."  And I pulled it up on my phone to look it over.  I pressed some button and the whole damn thing erased.  

Oh well.  

My mom said, "I'm so sorry!", but it reminds me that our egos can't be so connected to stuff.

I wrote a thing.  I'll write another thing.  

Maybe this one will say what I want to say even more than the pretty, first version.  But what a re-write gives me the chance to do is tell the story that I was trying to tell in a different way.

I started the Erased Blog with a poem that I love, which I am including again below.  

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53677/the-blessing-of-the-old-woman-the-tulip-and-the-dog

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

BY ALICIA OSTRIKER

To be blessed 

said the old woman 

is to live and work 

so hard 

God’s love 

washes right through you 

like milk through a cow

To be blessed 

said the dark red tulip 

is to knock their eyes out 

with the slug of lust 

implied by 

your up-ended skirt

To be blessed 

said the dog 

is to have a pinch 

of God 

inside you 

and all the other 

dogs can smell it

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

And here is what I was trying to say in the Erased Blog...YOU have a pinch of God in you.
I am not kidding.  I want you to take a minute and feel that.  

And when you know this and feel it, you will love the world and the world will love you and everything that is petty will be put in it's fitting place.

I was thinking about this particularly as we head into a 'season of giving.'  I was thinking about this when I looked at how and why we are thankful.  I was thinking about this when I listened to the news and heard so many stories of sexual harassment and assault that are being told and wondering why people are cruel to one another.

Pema Chodron is a Buddhist nun and author - one of her books, The Places That Scare You, I read on my solo trip to Sedona, AZ, and it was a time in my life that I was very afraid.  I believe it's in that book that she describes a meditation, which  I will try to recreate more or less below - though I don't have the book in my library anymore, and I know I am getting details wrong.  If you are a nitpicker, please don't look this up.    

Sit in a quiet place and 'meditate' - think and breathe and focus on deeply loving yourself.  Feeling compassion for yourself and beloved.  Appreciate your very being.  Just know and experience knowing that you don't have to do anything special - your existence is beloved in the universe.  Do this meditation every day for a month.

Spend the next month, doing that same meditation for someone who is easy for you to love - your child, your best friend, your brother.  Just experience loving them unconditionally and basking in that.

Spend the next month, doing the same for someone who is more difficult to love for you - a picky boss, a bossy friend, a grouchy mother.  Feel that love for and about them - that compassion for their existence.  

Now, the same for the world.

Finally, for someone very difficult in your life.  Someone you've found impossible to love.  See... you, have to work up to that one.

But, I think the key is mostly about the first step.  

My daughter, reading over my shoulder, just asked me, "What if you love yourself TOO much?"  I said "If you love with the kind of love I'm talking about, it can't be too much."  What I mean is, we could easily feel gratitude or lucky or even a little pat on the back, or surface level love because, "I have a great job, so I love myself."  "I am a great mom, so I love myself."  "My house looks beautiful, I love myself."  "I made a meal for that dad with cancer, I love myself."  NO.  This is not the love I am talking about.

You don't have to do anything or be anything.  You just are.  You are just loved.  

Take the time to quiet and even overcome all the voices that we hear in our heads that argue or excuse or say, 'yet, but'... and in that space of listening and feeling, we  know deep compassion and joy and love for our selves.  

This is what I do on my daily walks and runs - I am not a sit down and meditator, so this is my mindfulness time.  Most often in that 1/2 hour or so, I love - love myself, yes.  But what so easily happens is that that love and compassion swells like a wave.  I feel joy that spreads to all I see, the people in my heart, the colors of the trees, my neighbors, the grey cat ready to pounce on a chipmunk by the train tracks, my children, my friends, the color blue in the sky.  Nobody has to do anything.  I don't have to do anything, except let myself be aware of the beauty that is.    

I am no Buddhist nun - I am not a perfect specimen of compassion and love for every sentient being on this planet.  But, I know that when the love starts from inside it will transform everything you feel, do and say.  And this is the blessing - it is already there.  That's what I was trying to say in my previous blogpost (the Erased One).  That is what Alicia Ostriker is saying in her beautiful poem.  

Whether you let yourself feel it or not - there's a pinch of God in you and there's nothing you can do about it.