You Better (Not) Think

THANKS TO SKIN CANCER I FORGOT HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT. What I mean is that I spent so much time since June 26 (who’s counting?) anticipating the other side of this debaucle that I got out of practice of the whole Being thing. I mean, I tried to be present, grateful, all that stuff. Like what I wrote about before. And for the record, someone just the other told me they had no idea what I was going through and how limited I was by it all — so I must have been soldiering on pretty well. (Which is not exactly the same as staying present, but…). What I’m saying is that I made an effort to stay in my body, but there was a lot of impetus to depart.

I’m still slowly reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. One idea that he asks the reader to accept is that we are our bodies, but not those impermanent ones prone to disease and death. There’s an Inner Body he speaks of and I think that might be the place the Holy Spirit resides, for those of us who track with that particular idea. The point is, we’re supposed to become one with a thing that for so many people — for so many centuries — has represented more evil than good. “If the master is not present in the house,” Tolle writes, ” all kinds of shady characters will take up residence there” (124). Religion, he argues (and I think a lot of folks would agree) has interrupted up this relationship with body, focusing too often on the superficial one while leaving the spiritual one far out of the conversation. Some religious practices actually require denial of the body, like with fasting. Or corporeal self-punishment, like self-flaggelation, which is apparently still a thing in some parts.

So why did I come to the conclusion that I’m out of practice of the mindfulness that has been so central to my life for so long? I’ll tell you why, because when I finally had the time to watch my thoughts, they were hurdling down the freeway at about 100 miles an hour, even as I sat quietly overlooking Maine’s coastal harbor, the gentle sound of water lapping against the dark shimmering rocks, soft sunlight warming my shoulders (though not my face of course, because damned if I’m going to cook these scars into my visage!). So there I was, ensconced in what could very well have passed as the requisite photo accompanying the dictionary definition of “bucolic” and I was wondering what my flights home might be like:

Middle seat again? And how was I even going to get to the Portland airport? Would it really cost $125? Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed those extra nights. That was a lot of money. Would I be teaching two courses this fall to cover all these big bills that were coming because I was living it up in Maine for a week? And when was I going to grade those summer session papers? Would that one student hassle me about her grade some more? Where did she learn to gaslight? Why is that term so popular these days anyway? Were more people doing it, or is it just a vocabulalric trend? I need to get that fall syllabus written for my new job. How much will I change it? For time’s sake I should probably just keep it the way it is, but I know I’m not going to because I want to incorporate Western history in there. Why don’t we learn about the West back East? What did I learn about California in high school civics, besides about the Gold Rush? That was my 4th grade project, I wrote a fictitious journal about a gold miner, probably after reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica about gold mining.

I was also wondering:

How far have I just walked on the beach? Is that app on the phone really accurate? Why do I care about the number anyway? Because I haven’t been able to work out for almost 2 months so all movement is crucial, that’s why. I have a lot of work to do to get back in shape. Plus I’m eating like a horse. Why were all those lobster rolls so expensive — did I really need to get three of them on the trip? I promised I would eat lobster here but why really? Do I even like lobster?

And:

Are these scars really going to heal? Am I going to have a bumpy face forever? Did I walk too long in the arroyo last weekend and not put on enough sunscreen ? I have SPF 75 now. But then I think I read that anything over 30 is overkill. But it’s a Neutrogena product that I paid a lot of money for, so it should be accurate. Why do I spend money like that? I don’t usually. I was just trying to save my face. I hope the photos people took at the wedding make me look normal. The scar on my cheek is okay but the nose thing looks creepy. I hope there’s some good photos I can share on Instagram. What kind of captions will I write? Should I write about it being a gay wedding, or does that just sound like I’m trying to show how woke I am? But it was a gay wedding and that’s something to celebrate. I want to celebrate that. Even though one of those grooms hassled me too much about whether I was coming to the wedding or not…

Anyway…

Tolle says “Presence is pure consciousness — consciousness that has been reclaimed from the mind, from the world of form.” I think it’s fair to say that I was un-conscious a lot of the time these past few months, relative to my usual state of being anyway. I was out of practice. Because not only had I been limited in my physical activity, by doctor’s orders, I had apparently ordered my own mental activity to be limited as well. Limited to possibility, and dreaming, and adventure, and curiousity–and stillness, most importantly of all. I forgot how to be still, in mind and inner body. Meanwhile my outer body was just about as still as it’s ever been.

But now I am back from my vacation, and on the other side of this medical saga. Back to the gym, and back to my spiritual practices. And it’s okay that I strayed. We all do sometimes, straying off into the worldly and material. But, the good news is that if we have been practicing something pretty regularly for a while, it comes back to us quickly once we re-enter its space. Sort of like how my French starts to return whenever I land in Paris! Practice makes perfect…practice, maybe. I am back to perfecting my practice of being in the now and it feels really, really good. Why, I hardly am even thinking about how I have to upload all the reading assignments on my new college’s education platform which I am totally unfamiliar with — hardly thinking of that at all…