sometimes, the unexpected bumps are painful.
this was a timely one, of course. it arrived just at the point in time when i was beginning to ‘feel good’ about having made progress. just at the point before that feeling good turned into feel proud.
so i’m standing here, drying tears off my face, and metaphorically rubbing my head, which has this HUGE goosebump rising, and dang it… it’s SORE.
meanwhile, my ego is just all to pieces, crouching over there in the corner and trying to make it all blink out of existence by refusing to look. which makes me laugh.
a local teacher told me vajrayana is like ‘ripping off the bandages and screaming through the pain’ and i’m starting to get just a little afraid because it’s pretty damn painful now… and i feel like they (the bandages) really haven’t been ripped off just yet.
to totally wear the analogy out… i feel like the nurse just entered the room. hasn’t even touched me yet.
shudder. anticipation is worse than actuality. this is the thing i tell myself. that and constant reminders to breathe (meditate).
oddly, of late, the whole phoenix theme isn’t as attractive to me. which surprises. suddenly, for reasons i cannot begin to imagine, the image of a dandelion is prevelant. i’ve written about it but i haven’t really ‘done it justice’.
dandelions are those ‘flowers’ that you loved as a child… because you could blow at them and their entire head would fall off and go floating on the wind. i can’t even remember how many poor dandelions i’ve destroyed in just that fashion in my life.
funny thing is… well, there are actually two things that make that funny… first, dandelions aren’t flowers at all. they’re weeds.
but they are not “just” weeds.
they are tenacious, stubborn, fucking-almost-impossible to kill weeds.
ask anyone trying to keep a nice lawn. ask most gardeners.
no matter how much poison you throw on them…
no matter how many times you rip them out of the ground and toss them into the trash…
no matter how many mowers roll over and lop off their heads…
they just sink their roots into wherever they land and start growing again.
yeah. that sounds about right. in all the worst ways. likely in none of the best ones. (wry grin)
as a matter of fact, the only way you can really kill the little bastards is…
burn them.
hah. now if that isn’t irony, synchronicity, and interdependence all at once, i just don’t know what any of those things mean.
the second thing that makes me laugh is that dandelions are made so that no matter how many children come along and rip them out of the ground and blow their heads off, they will continue to grow.
not only this — the actual act OF ripping them out of the ground and blowing their heads off IS the thing that helps them best.
i’m starting to learn how to embrace my danedelioness… my weedness. fuzzy outlines. someone at the virtual sangha today dealt me an unexpected kindness and it arrived in the breeze of that gift.
i wrote to them of the humor that i might ever imagine myself a rose. hah. me. a rose. me in all my fizzy, stubborn, floppy headed, dandelion weedness.
oh foolish dandelion me. the wind is coming… maybe this time, i’ll fly.
hrm. dandelioness. that’s an interesting term.
i’m working on embracing my weedness (unrealized state). in case it isn’t obvious.