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[12/15/21 09:12]
I'm trying to have a fifteen minute meditation in the morning. I settle in with my garden mandala meditation (which i should revisit in a journal entry; i've been using it at least 25 years). I'd asked what i should be doing for a query and the response was: seed, root, shoot, leaf, flower, fruit.... seed. It's a cycle. This morning's reflection is that i should use the metaphor of growth and inventory different parts of myself and my experience.
Psychologically, the ADHD insight is between seed and root. It's a recently planted idea, and in therapy yesterday my therapist observed i am being more compassionate with myself and ... providing myself with the behaviors i want. I believe having a way to frame why somethings are so hard is helping me accept they are hard and slog through imperfectly, instead of feeling the failure.
Spiritually, i feel i am in a root phase, too. Here it's more a seasonal cycle -- my Quaker path took flower and fruited, but the leaves -- where something is giving energy -- have withered. Starting this meditation practice is the stirring of well structured practices that have been dormant after -- a decade? -- of very active Meeting membership.
2021-12-17: side note, my sister's eldest got his ADHD official diagnosis yesterday, my brother was a few weeks ago, and my brother's eldest was diagnosed this past summer (or spring).
Kinesthetically, i have many little seeds. I can tell i need to become intentional to improve my balance, address my joints and posture. I'm not sure whether those seeds will root, but one practice i am getting better at is standing for a small part of my work day. I will see where that goes.
[12/15/21 09:19]
Intellectually, i have two frames. On one hand, my intellectual life is in full leaf, flower, and fruit. My work life falls there, but i think i want to consider separate aspects. Perhaps i should think of the more narrow frame -- Conversationally where am i? This is in some sense a new concern, a combination of the ADHD awareness and new practices at dinner with Christine. I know i've bored Christine when i share my ruminations about the landscape - platns, plants, plants. And thinking about interactions with my family conversationally -- my Dad has a complete rut of topicss and stories, Mom never had any skills at conversation and either vented her criticism or listed everything she needed to do. I've been told i'm a good listener, but i have felt in som many gatherings that i am not seen because i had no way to show who i am.
I'm trying to have a fifteen minute meditation in the morning. I settle in with my garden mandala meditation (which i should revisit in a journal entry; i've been using it at least 25 years). I'd asked what i should be doing for a query and the response was: seed, root, shoot, leaf, flower, fruit.... seed. It's a cycle. This morning's reflection is that i should use the metaphor of growth and inventory different parts of myself and my experience.
Psychologically, the ADHD insight is between seed and root. It's a recently planted idea, and in therapy yesterday my therapist observed i am being more compassionate with myself and ... providing myself with the behaviors i want. I believe having a way to frame why somethings are so hard is helping me accept they are hard and slog through imperfectly, instead of feeling the failure.
Spiritually, i feel i am in a root phase, too. Here it's more a seasonal cycle -- my Quaker path took flower and fruited, but the leaves -- where something is giving energy -- have withered. Starting this meditation practice is the stirring of well structured practices that have been dormant after -- a decade? -- of very active Meeting membership.
2021-12-17: side note, my sister's eldest got his ADHD official diagnosis yesterday, my brother was a few weeks ago, and my brother's eldest was diagnosed this past summer (or spring).
Kinesthetically, i have many little seeds. I can tell i need to become intentional to improve my balance, address my joints and posture. I'm not sure whether those seeds will root, but one practice i am getting better at is standing for a small part of my work day. I will see where that goes.
[12/15/21 09:19]
Intellectually, i have two frames. On one hand, my intellectual life is in full leaf, flower, and fruit. My work life falls there, but i think i want to consider separate aspects. Perhaps i should think of the more narrow frame -- Conversationally where am i? This is in some sense a new concern, a combination of the ADHD awareness and new practices at dinner with Christine. I know i've bored Christine when i share my ruminations about the landscape - platns, plants, plants. And thinking about interactions with my family conversationally -- my Dad has a complete rut of topicss and stories, Mom never had any skills at conversation and either vented her criticism or listed everything she needed to do. I've been told i'm a good listener, but i have felt in som many gatherings that i am not seen because i had no way to show who i am.
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As far as conversation is concerned: I seem gradually to have come round to feeling that the general level of skills in the US is low. So many listening exercises in seminary. And what was second-level baffling to me was how surprised and pleased my exercise partners would be that I heard what they said and could tell it back, without interpretation.
I suspect that a lot of people unconsciously place themselves as judges or reviewers of what's said to them, as ones to be entertained and to judge the entertainment. Several years ago I was explaining over and over to Sheeyun that if you take an interest in things other people are interested in, you can find them interesting. That my life had been so much enriched that way. And that he wouldn't find his own life as pleasurable if, for just one example, I just said, "No, I'm not interested in hockey, I never have been." (This was eventually successful. Or anyway, Sheeyun returned to conversing rather than speaking about the interesting important things enough that it was as if my efforts had been successful.)
I listened to the The Bechdelcast podcast this morning on the movie Double Indemnity, in which they talked for some time about the extreme artificiality of the period Witty Banter dialogue. Which, yes. And thinking about that, I suspect that it exhibits how desperate people were for conversational novelty, and how desperate women were to be found funny.