Do The Dishes.

I realized the other day that I have forgotten my practices.  I am not sitting, I am resisting my dishes and my chores, feeling them to be beneath me.  Truth is,  they are not.  I am not above them, and they are not beneath me.  Unless, of course, you count the actual, physical reality of the floor being under my feet, and the sink existing at about waist height.  Physically, they may be beneath me.  If they were not, how could the floor support me?  It's the floor that I walk on.  It is the floor that stops me from plummeting into the basement when I come downstairs from my bed.  So, yes, unless you count absolute physical reality, my chores are not beneath me.  When I put my hands in the dishwater and feel the warmth of the water,  smell the manufactured scent of apples from the soap, and put my hands and mind to the task in front of me, I forget myself. One dish at a time, the job gets done.  When the job is done, for just one moment, I feel good. I got it done.  

I have not been sitting in the mornings.  I wake up feeling awful, sore in my neck and shoulder, not awake at all, and I head straight for the coffee.  I don't stop to sit.  

Ruts are tricky things, especially when we are not entirely awake, or aware of our actions.  Truth is, though, if we are acting, then it is on us to be aware of our actions.  

I have been feeling anxious of late, and I can trace that right back to my practices, or lack of them.  

When I forget my practices, I begin to forget myself.  I believe, as I am forgetting, that I am busy being myself, busy being in the minutiae of my life.  The truth is that I am busy avoiding my life.  Busy with the can'ts and the why me's and the couldn't possibly's.  I am wrapped in the no more, and the don't want, and the how do I's.  I am too busy resisting to engage.  There is not enough of me left to truly engage when I get lost in the resistance.  

Anxiety is the fruit of I don't have time, and I don't want to, and the why bother.  Analysis creates paralysis, or so says a wise teacher of mine.  

Do.

Be. 

Sit. 

Wash.

Hug.

Breathe.

Live. 

It's really not as hard as I imagine.  Stop imagining.  Do the dishes.  Sit.  Love my children, especially when they seem unlovable.  That is when they need my love the most.  

See life, stop imagining the life I want, and live the life I have.  It is the only one I will ever be given. 

"When we see our life, we bring it to life.  When we don't see our life, it seems lifeless"  Karen Maezen Miller 

Read more from Maezen on her blog www.karenmaezenmiller.com