Silent despair

Why is happiness so difficult to achieve? 
Just like a butterfly, you can be chasing it all the time and the moment you think you are near, almost at grasp, it flies away again. And again. And again. But if you stay still and wait, the butterfly will come to you eventually. This is what I was told recently and now I’m contemplating the meaning of this. It’s Tuesday night, in a decaying city, I’ve just watched hundreds of people all gathered in the main squares in a silent protest against the misery that has become our norm, and then I’ve watched a movie, Miral, about another misery in another land that’s claimed by people who can’t live harmonically with eachother. In other words, what I experience inside, I see it happening outside. Oh, and today is the anniversary of my wedding. Or was. Not the anniversary. The wedding. It no longer is. It lasted about six months and then, suddenly, gone. Everything. My life as I knew it. My newly found friends. My newly found family. Gone. Just like that.

Anyway, back to happiness. According to all my spiritual books, happiness is our natural state. So, what is it that brought us to where we are today? Amidst conflict and destruction, violence and immorality, sadness and despair? I feel I’m surrounded by disappointed, disheartened people everywhere, people who don’t even know that happiness is their birthright, because this is who they are, but instead of looking for happiness, they are so used to live in confusion and dishonesty all their lives, they don’t know otherwise. Imagine if there was honesty in this world. Well, I can’t, to be honest! I don’t know what it would be like. Very awkward, like that movie with Jennifer Gardner , 'The Invention of Lying'. Imagine politicians being honest. Doctors. Even car-mechanics! But I’m getting carried away here, that’s not the point that I want to make today though it’s an interesting topic for a future post. Ofcourse, I have to mention the fact that in world politics, if the politicians had a thread of sincerity in them, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today. 

But how honest can you be? All the way? Like that movie? I guess a middle way is not considered honesty anymore, but it has troubled me lately whether keeping silent for some facts, it breaks the law of honesty or whether it is your personal right to keep some things to yourself. I’m used to be open and honest but lately I’ve been accused by my best friend that not revealing all the facts is equal to lying. And today on a beautifully set date with wild-ocean-eyed guy, I think I revealed too much and scared him off. So how much truth is enough so is bearable? Can you really measure truth? Too much can hurt, too little  is  a lie. And is it really the truth that we are searching for? I’m not convinced. We think we are, but bottom line is that we are after the thrill that we get when we are so close to the butterfly, almost there, arms spread, one more jump, almost catching it, and yet, it slips away again. We carry on this way thinking we know it all, we know the truth but because we are too afraid to look it in the eye, we hide away, locked in our apartments, weak, miserable and lonely,  ignorant, insecure, lifeless.  In my mind, the truth is that we are afraid to be happy. Because happiness is a daily practice. And practice requires work to be done with discipline, patience and an open heart to all. And not everyone is willing to do that. In fact, very few people are. A wise man from the Andes of  Peru once told me ‘Who said happiness is easy’? and he couldn’t be more right. There is work to be done, depths to be explored, obstacles to be removed, shadows to face, wounds to heal, addictions to deal with, demons to fight. One must be mad, to go through all this. No wonder people are not really interested in the true pursue of happiness. They think it’ll come sky-diving, like a lottery win or a galloping white knight. 

For me, the openness of our hearts is what shapes our reality and the fact that our reality is so gloomy and sad depicts the hearts of all these people in the city that I saw gathered today - a silent despair. Last year this day was the happiest of my life. This year this day, is one of the saddest. I cry over the state of this country which I love, over the state of the people, over the state of me. The silent protesters  that are taking over the squares are spreading in our hearts, the silence deafening. There is a big wound in our lives right now. Inwardly and outwardly. But life often hurts, as we all know. And so does the truth, sometimes.

So, have we all become truth-intolerant?  

Con mucho amor,

Tabitha

On independence

Why would you think independence falls into the same category with beer, football, and messy toilet seats? Because it’s a guy thing. It’s the first thing they tell you when you start seeing them along with their favorite players in Man United. It’s a totally guy thing, invented by them, enjoyed and solely used by them. ‘Oh, I like you but I don’t want to lose my independence’. In opposed to what? Slavery? Heck,  they think so highly of it, they might as well all celebrate on Independence day, afterall  it was 56 who started it and now they got half the population of the world as followers! Forget the historic meaning of the day, this is much bigger! This is half humanity who swears by the word, shivering with the single thought of losing it. I mean, what do they think that we gonna do anyway? chain them down with iron-balls and put them into hard labor? I never heard of a woman saying ‘hey  babe, I would see you tonight, but I’ve got to go down the pub with my mates for a beer, it’s foottie night!’ No, because us women ( except for the fact that we don’t drink beer and watch football) deep down  we do want to lose our independence! Still hanging on the fairytale’s happy ending that the prince will show up and life will become better in an instant, we don’t mind giving up our freedom for the sake of a good date, many times canceling already made plans when that  phonecall comes the last minute. Many of you might say, no, not me, but I know, I’ve lived it with all my girlfriends over and over, I’ve been there and done it myself. I’m not saying that either of us should be available 24/7, that’s boring and wrong. Is just that over the years the realization came that freedom comes from within. The same freedom that kept Nelson Mandella’s mind independent for 27 years imprisonment, the same freedom that you can have when you are in a bad job, in a bad marriage, in a situation you don’t want to be in, it’s the free spirit in all of us that keeps us going when it gets tough. Independence has little to do with the outside and lots to do with the inner world. 

Do you feel at peace in your own skin, alone, doing nothing but just enjoying your own company? Do you feel aligned, body and spirit? Are you honest with everyone around you, including yourself? Have you stopped taking things personally ? How attached are you from all things that make up your life today? Are you here, now? These and many others are just examples of the locks we all have to our own chains that keep us slaves to our thoughts ,our minds. Having been a free spirit all my life, I strived for nothing else, than to achieve just that. I’ve watched my outside world falling apart over and over but I wouldn’t give up the fight for ‘the precious’. It’s taken a long and steep road to get to where I am today.

The inner freedom that I experience lately, allows space for spontaneity, for my day to develop as I want it, sucking as much enjoyment of it as I feel like it, when I feel like it. Even when I do chores that I don’t particularly enjoy, I think of all the positive things that can come out of it, and that helps me being more focused to the work at hand, being from washing-up to filling-up tax forms. Staying in the moment, not letting your mind drift away to the tomorrow’s and the yesterday’s allows you to enter into a ‘portal’ of freedom that has no boundaries, inner or outer.  But freedom requires discipline, otherwise you wouldn’t know you had it! Anyhow, I’m not sure now how we came to that, I started off with the independence issue, a hot issue for all of us. To me, independence is detachment. Recognizing that my thoughts create my emotions and they create the attachments to this and that, was the first step I took towards true independence. Detachment. Knowing that without nothing, sleeping under the stars, I’ll still be happy. Very happy. Everything passes and nothing passes, a friend reminded me the other day, a phrase he uses very often. 

So, back to the guys and their independence.  They can be as free as they like, out with their mates, flirting with girls in bars, what have you whilst in reality they longed to be curled with you in bed sipping wine and exchanging oil massages….but no, they’ve got to honor their independence and do their thing.  And to be quite honest…. I like it! The sight of neediness and clinginess I see in so many couples (and particularly women) around me, gives me the chills and personally I’m not going down that road again. I believe we all need space to grow and keep developing our personalities whether in a relationship or not. It just dawned on me now that I brought that issue up because I’m dealing with it lately, with standing on my own feet. Apparently it’s the reason that my last relationship ended, I became too dependent on him, with no life of my own. Is it true? I don’t know, yes and no. What I saw as a natural development in a relationship after a year’s time, he saw as dependence. So, I’m not clear about that yet. 

Could it be that our need for love overcasts our individuality and we forget who we were when the prince comes along and we ride on his horse? Or is it simple-and ever-present- insecurity? Do I need love, or do I want love? I believe that I want a guy who wants me, not a guy who needs me. Who wants to love me and I want to love him back. Neediness has no space in my life anymore. And so, this is my declaration of independence, I sign it today and try and remember it tomorrow when old patterns resurface and new challenges come….

Con mucho amor,

Tabitha

With an open heart

Gosh it’s been so long since my last post, and I sound like I’m in confession now…But so many things have happened, I like to believe that there are good things, but only time can tell…First, it was the meditation retreat. Wearing nothing but my peaceful warrior’s armor, stripped from egos and ready to endure the long journey inwards, off I went. First time in my life I was silent for so long! One of the  rules of a vipasana meditation is that you avoid eye-contact, walk with your head down, and try not to stick-out (sounds like being a tourist in New York!). Hours on end I sat in a meditative pose, letting my mind drift off to the weirdest places called my thoughts, observing them, questioning them, analyzing. Sure, there were moments where I was really meditating, as I’ve been learning to do, during which, there was no thoughts, no me, no persona, no being. Moments where I just vanished and became one with the universe. I’ve enjoyed every –long-minute of it, regardless of the pain in my legs and the stiffness of my body, regardless of the inner pain caused by the discoveries and the realizations of all that I’ve done that I wasn’t proud of. But I had an intention. And as always when I’m under such conditions of trying to get to roots and the truth I had an intention which kept me going on and on till I got to the ‘clearing’ out of the jungle of tangled branches that occupy my mind, and that’s no other than the Light. I always seek to get to the light, meaning, that’s my ultimate goal, it’s the end of the path and it’s the path itself. By shedding a light to the dark corners of my mind – similar to what I do in yoga with my body – helps me get to a deeper understanding not of the ‘why’s  but of the ‘how’s. I find that the ‘whys’ are much easier to answer and if you go down that line, it’s endless, as you can always answer a ‘why’ question with another ‘why’ question and so on….But the ‘how’ gives you answers which are immediate, can be followed and acted upon.  They also help by eliminating less viable options in a situation as instinctively you know which is the right path to follow, even if your ego resists because it might not like it.  The ‘how’ question could apply to everything and it’s a good wake-up call when you are uncertain about a situation. 

To sum it all up, the meditation and silence retreat went down well, I’ve been much more ‘in tune’ with my inner self lately and that so far has brought wonderful things my end, in the weeks that followed. Right now I’m dog-sitting at a friend’s villa in a fairytale garden. I'm watching the wisteria growing more purple flowers over the pergola everyday, listening to the  angelic voice of Hayley Westenra singing and enjoying this magical country paradise with the golden retriever sleeping on my lap, surrounded by spring floral scents and the song of the frogs at dusk….And it doesn’t end there. Tomorrow I’m going to watch my favorite opera, Carmen, and my work is improving day by day and I can see me even….enjoying it! Now when I go to the office, I laugh and make jokes with my co-workers, I’m approachable, I actually talk to them and they talk to me back. There is no tension (so far) and I feel quite good and I begin to gain my confidence back, realizing that I’m not that bad, after all….The truth is, that I begin to like my life, and that’s a revelation on it’s own. I’m so used to look at all the bad the sad and the ugly, I forget all about the good things that are thrown on my feet daily. I’m not going to go on about gratitude again, but yes, I’ve got so much to be grateful for. All of us.  Right now I feel very grateful to my ex, for instance, for letting me go and having the courage to end a relationship that was not happy. Though I spent all winter breaking my head with the ‘if’s and the ‘why’s, the answers came to me loud and clear lately that now I had the space for new things in my life, and that’s why I was so open to everything that the universe brought my way, be it a job in another country, new activities, new friends. 

But I had to go through a very frightening period of self-examining and uncovering lurking shadows disguised as behavioral patterns that we follow unconditionally unless they are pointed out and in the open. I went low, like a limbo dancer, as low as you can go, I was hurting, I was gasping for air in the dark cells of my unbearable existence. I pulled through though, all the training I’ve been doing is beginning to pay off now, me thinks, and the moments in the day that are happy, are increasing daily. Isn’t that what we all want at the end of the day? To be happy? Is there anything else? Being happy is our natural state, once you feel it you know, there is no other way we can be. So my goal is to remove all the obstacles of my way to happiness simply by dealing with them.  Easier said than done,  so many challenges pop up daily that we have to deal with, with honesty and an open heart. And let’s not forget, that love is a practice that requires discipline, commitment, consciousness, truth, intention, integrity and-always- an open heart. Imagine if all people practiced love daily, how different this world would be…just imagine....

Con mucho amor,

Tabitha