a year ago i was fairly at peace with myself. dare i say, even happy? i was at the lowest weight of my adult life, i had a fabulous new guy in my life who treated me (& still treats me) like a goddess, i had found joy in writing again, & i felt like i finally- really & truly honest injun- had a good handle on my life.
the last time before then that i can recall having peace in my life was winter of '95/spring of '96. at that time i had begun researching wicca & i was meditating on a regular basis. i was giving myself the cosmic space that my physical self needed. my meditations got to the point where i was verging on the edge of energy play & lucid dreaming. if i would've kept it up i'd probably be an expert at both of them.
these are the only two times that i can remember not waking up most days with some sense of self loathing. now back in the 1990's i was still a pretty big gal, but i was a happy big gal. i let people take pictures of me, & when i looked at those pictures at the time i thought i was cute. now it makes me want to vomit, but that's another issue. so the disconnect between the physical space that my being took up makes me think that my happiness is most likely not weight related. i was definitely pushing 300 in the mid-nineties, but it was still a good time for me.
the two things these things have in common is meditation & giving my mind the chance to wander where it will. how did i come to this conclusion? please refer to the posting wwskd. i was just reading on writing (seriously, if you haven't read it you really really should) & he was talking about a mental space that he had built for his writing. & it made me pause & say to myself "self, maybe i need to create a mental space for writing." ok, yeah, a total duh moment, but not all epiphanys are light bulb moments.
somewhere at home i still have my cedar incense that i burned nearly every day last year. i used the smell of cedar to help transport me away from my apartment, my monetary worries, all the other little bullshit in life that interferes. i won't be trite & say it took me to a happy place, but it took me to where i needed to be. & maybe that's not such a bad thing.
routine can be a powerful tool when it comes to the human mind. in a way we can condition our selves in a similar way to that of pavlov's dogs. one action will automatically make us primed for another action. for myself, brushing my teeth makes me want to go to the bathroom. probably because every night before i go to bed i a) brush my teeth & then b) go to the bathroom. so routine has ingrained in me a desire to pee after brushing my teeth. sorry if that was a tmi, but it illustrates this point beautifully.
now extend that. when i used to meditate i would often burn incense too. so it became an olfactory trigger for my brain. cedar burning=relax=write. i could have worse habits, ala hemingway or hunter s. thompson, who took the chemical route to writing enlightenment. i'm not saying that's necessarily wrong, although definitely not endorsed by the medical association or your friendly neighborhood doctor.
at a time where i know very little i do have a few known factors. #1 i can't continue with this depression #2 at this time i'm wasting my writing talent #3 something needs to be done to fix #1 & #2. like any historian will tell you "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." in this case my history has some good things to teach me, so there's no reason for me to take the hard way if i can take myself back to what has worked for me before.
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