I encountered a hidden blessing two days ago.
As of late, I’ve been, let’s say, “experimenting” with meditation, finding a sense of spirit, and searching out a way to make that sense of spirit last. I say “sense of spirit” because I hesitate to use the word “spirituality.” I’m a words-girl… words have a lot of weight with me. There are words I love, cherish, consider sacred… and then there are words that I consider trashy, disgusting, and sometimes vulgar. It has nothing to do with the meaning of the word–it only has to do with my associations, the way the word feels, sounds, the things it may or may not imply… “spiritual” is one of those icky words. It doesn’t make me think of peace, happiness, joy, gratitude, existence, philosophy, higher planes of being… nope. It makes me think of crazed lunatic conservative Southern Baptists bringing hellfire and damnation upon the heads of the so-called sinners. (This is what I get for growing up in the Bible Belt.) I think a lot of people are this way–someone always gets squirmy when they hear “spiritual”–it’s almost like you’re trying to convince them that, yes, in fact, their parents have had sex. I’ve squirmed like that more than once. This is probably why I’m so hesitant about the so-called spiritual aspects of yoga; I want my spirit to stay inside where it belongs, thankyouverymuch.
So… using the phrase “sense of spirit” is my compromise. It lets me explore while still being… distant… and maybe that’s a problem. Maybe you can’t discover a connection to spirituality while keeping it at arm’s length. Maybe you have to jump headfirst and hope you don’t drown. (Considering that I’ve never been one to jump into anything, we’ll leave it as a hypothetical and hope that the slow-and-steady approach can be just as rewarding…)
Anyway: this blessing. A very, very good friend of mine, who overworks herself every day, holds up the pillars of more lives than I can count, and who is reluctant to even acknowledge that she needs time for herself, let alone take it, called me out of the blue. “Hey, Terra, do you ever meditate or lead meditations?” I didn’t know what to say, ‘cos, yeah, I kinda meditate… to the extent that I can get my mind to shut. UP! for ten minutes… but I would never say that I’m a guru, that I’ve seen the face of God, or anything like that. But she sounded upset. “Well…. yeah. I guess. Want me to come over tonight?”
So I went over. She was in tears because she hates her job and she can’t quit because her husband only just started graduate school. He was working diligently at some reading/translation and she was in the middle of cooking dinner at 8:30. (The mother hen in me hates to see anyone eat dinner after 7pm). So I let her eat, tell me about her day, tell me why she was so frustrated, and then I just went into this… schpiel. I told myself, “She needs a guru and I’m not a guru… but she has me, and I can be whatever it is that I am, and maybe, just for today, I can dress up like a guru and she can pretend that I am what she needs.” I hope I helped. Nothing, at that point, could have hurt. But I considered it an honor to even be in that position, to begin with… it was definitely a reflection on how far I’ve come in just less than a year.
My writing skills may have drifted… my ambition to do well in classes may have faltered… but my sense of self-control and knowledge of thought processes has grown tenfold. Things I had never even considered last winter are now at the forefront of my mind. In this friend, I see so much of me: hurt, confused, overwhelmed, weighed down, spiraling. I could never say that those things are totally resolved (are they ever?), but there’s a better way to deal with them than fighting them away day after day until they get the best of you. I would never have found my path without the power and help of extremely good friends who will never know how influential they were. I may not convince this friend to take the same path… but just showing her the option is a blessing, in my book.
(And a “blessing,” by the way, is always a good word.)