Little Heart Openings

It was a good thing that the Queen was in the middle of a Shambhala meditation class when she foolishly checked her email on her I-phone during the break and saw a message from her lawyer. The ex-King’s lawyer now wants to collect his fees at her expense. Good thing the Queen has been practicing a lot because this kind of thing can send her into a powerful spell of funk.

It was almost miraculous that as the burning upset started to arise, the meditation teacher was talking about just such a thing. How these thoughts interrupt our peaceful abiding if we let them. The breath and the present are very powerful tools, if you are willing to use them. I know how painful it is to have to indulge in the demon forces. The present really is my Knight in Shining Armor. It takes care of me. The demons of the past are held at bay. I have a lot of space between the upset, the trauma and my body is slowly releasing it.

The evil Judge Klein rejected my lawyer’s request for his fees to be paid since I had to take Justin Chipman to court because he let my house go into foreclosure. The other judge was in agreement that the divorce agreement included my ability to protect myself with a lawyer, but it rotated away from her. Now Justin’s lawyer wants to collect on the same provision! There is no justice. It’s insane. I will just have to collect by complaining to the realtor board and collecting through his Errors and Omissions insurance. I think Justin is terrified about it, hence his kindness and “nice guy” act on full on for me. Something I’m a softy for. I thought I could get him to trade what he owes me to help me with the rental properties and my father’s house. But how soon I forget, my lawyer, another knight in shining armor, reminds me. Why would I put myself through the same torture of his incompetency, undependability, endless screw-ups and lies? I guess I’m like the old man in the fairy tale of the Old Man Who Could Make Withered Trees Bloom Again. Always kind, even to the evil do-ers. However, I think it’s a boundary issue. And I tend to attract the types of people who know they can cross my boundaries and I let them. No MORE!

I went to Anusara yoga class today with Jeanie Manchester. She’s so wonderful. Her little story about the monk who keeps falling in the same puddle day after day reminded me of my predicament. I don’t learn from experience very well. To become aware of this is the important thing. My son made me aware that I am always invalidating what he says. It was in a flash at the dinner table yesterday that I was made aware of this. He says something, and I say, no that’s not true. As if I think he is a child and doesn’t know the truth. But he’s almost 12 and very smart. I was shocked at myself. My daughter said, “It’s true mom. You do.” And she chimed in that I’m always disbelieving her. I said I was sorry and would do better. Awareness is key, and the ability to really surrender all of yourself.

So I was aware that little by little, my heart is opening, my chest is expanding. I contribute it to hot yoga deepening my muscle work, and the Anursara for the awareness of alignment. How the inner spiral of getting thighs back is so important to opening the heart, opening the chest. That the tension in my arms, even though I have a herniated disk at C3 from a hit-and-run car accident from there, is from the collapsed chest, the powerlessness. But little by little I am claiming my power. The Queen’s power that she can do anything once the demon groove of energetic patterning are removed from her body and she is left with the present to create and believe in anything she wants and make it come true. After a lot of back bends, I cried in shavasana again. That little by little releasing of all the old stuff, the realization that I am valuable. I am powerful and worthy of respect. Even remembering the hit-and-run car accident, how powerless I felt when I failed to identify the man from the license photos. The failure I felt. The abandonment when not only the man who hit me but the man that I hit with my car in front of me who also fled when I said I was hurt. How the body holds all that in, in the shoulders, the neck. The yoga, the meditation and breath and the present slowly unsnares everything like Drano unclogging everything from the deep.

After class I went to my father’s house again. We had lunch and later we worked on some piles of boxes of papers, magazines, junk mail and bills that were in the living room. I did find a few old Mother Earth News magazines to mull through, and a diary of my mother’s cross-country trip with her sister in 1953. But mostly it was tedious, as we went through every piece of paper in several boxes. I got hasty when it came to junk mail catalogs from 2000. He said, “Slow down!” And it irritated me. I began thinking of the futility of all this. Can I really live with my father? He doesn’t want to move out completely so we could clear it all out, gut it and redo it, we’d just work around him. I should just move to Puerto Rico. But then I want to take care of my father. I want to clean this house out. I want to have another adult around to help me raise my children. I want to have a beautiful garden in the backyard and go back to being a mother and homemaker again. Just without all the loneliness and isolation. We shall see.