Getting Ready for the Next Journey
Chakra Balancing
For the first time in a very long time, I did the Deepak Chopra Chakra Balancing meditation. It felt pretty awesome; I feel bright and energized. It’s a good meditation. I don’t know why I’ve been so hesitant to use it again. It’s been years. I guess while I was working I never felt like I had enough time for meditation, I always felt rushed.
Actually, I pretty much felt like that all the time, that I was in a rush because I needed to get to work and I was never caught up at work. Getting caught up, or staying caught up, was impossible after chemo and the burning neuropathy that plagues my fingers with each keystroke, and the mental destruction that comes with month after month after month of severe pain. Done with supply chain consulting, I am gradually adapting to my new simplified world of cancer survivor author and speaker, writing only when and as long as my hands can tolerate the neuropathy burning.
As life calms down and I am discovering time in my day for soul-satisfying things like guided meditation (or just being at peace lying in my hammock listening to the trees at my home in the national forest), I m becoming more and more aware of the absolute imbalance my life had become as I struggled to do my consulting job with longer and longer hours until my life was comprised entirely of the struggle to work while in pain, interrupted only by sleep. I even ate every meal at my computer, trying to get caught up and always feeling both late and rushed. There certainly was no time for long meditations like the chakra balancing can be. So to do so today was completely invigorating.
I didn’t get out yesterday, but the electricity did come back on last night, and stayed on. I still don’t have any heat though. I think the propane tank got too low because they couldn’t come to fill it because of all the snow. I spent all yesterday morning packing up stuff for the RV, and I got the Jeep loaded with the stuff that goes in there. I did drive out to the main road in the Jeep to see whether or not I thought the RV could get through yesterday and I was pretty much thinking not, and then I got the Jeep stuck right in front of the RV, so I spent a good deal of the afternoon on that mess (duh, why did I drive the Jeep onto four or five feet of snow? I thought I’d use the Jeep to tamp down the snow to get the RV out, but instead I made a big mess). Then, just as it got dark and I was settled in the RV for the night with both the cats, the electricity in the house came back on.
So, now that my chakras are more balanced and I know I want to get moving on my next journey as soon as the road is passable, I’m going to go try to get the snow off the top of the RV so I can get a satellite signal, and clear the snow from in front of it if possible. I pretty much need to do that by tomorrow I would think, otherwise it’s going to run out of propane too, meaning, no heat in the RV either. When it’s below freezing, the electric heat doesn’t run because it’s too hard on whatever the thing is that clicks on the heat, so then it gives itself propane for the heat automatically. Which, in this weather, means the propane runs out in a matter of days. I’m hopeful for the snow to stop falling (and start melting) today, though.
A Break
After working in the snow for a while digging out the front of the RV and trying to get the worst of the snow off the roof where I think it’s dripping water in around the seal of the slideout, I was kinda wiped out. I had several hours of laundry to do. (Get this: I found a suitcase full of laundry under my bed when I was packing up the RV yesterday. Initially I decided to take it as is, but now that the power’s back on, I can wash the rest of the clothes.) The sun was shining and I had opened the blinds on the sun side of the house. The cats were both lying on the back of the couch in the sun, and that looked pretty inviting, so after making some stir fry to use up my vegetables before they completely spoil, I sat myself down in the sunshine on the couch and, I have to admit, turned on the TV. The idea of lying in the sunlight being warm and resting both body and mind by letting something play on TV was just too enticing.
I remember seeing a snippet of it way back when and thinking the comedian (female, how do you spell comedian for when it’s a woman?) was funny and the topic interesting so I had scrolled ahead, set the DVR, and recorded it. Like, a year ago. Wow, seriously. I just checked, and it was recorded on 1/29/2010! Unbelievable. I kept putting off watching it because I was never quite in the mood for it even though I definitely wanted to see it and it’s one of the reasons I never returned my DVR when I (accidentally) stopped paying my dish service and they shut off my TV satellite for receiving signal. Hmmm, not sure my parents will like visiting here as much without their daily dose of Jeopardy. There isn’t really much for them to do out here.
Letting Go of God
Anyway, I just watched “Letting Go of God,” which is about this woman’s (Julia Something) relationship to God growing up in an Irish Catholic family going to Catholic school then doing a bible study and discovering how messed up and ridiculous the Bible is (she spent an hour on that, really convincing stuff about the contradictions and ridiculous nature of it as a moral guide) and gradually giving up Catholicism and, finding nothing to replace it, eventually becoming atheist. She’s now a hard core it’s-all-a-coincidence there-is-nothing-else-but-this-life atheist as in, not believing in anything, including spirituality and quantum physics. Her story was still amusing and she told it well (though her style was getting stale going into the 3rd hour) but I had a hard time following her once she disregarded consciousness. Sure, it’s all find and dandy until her opinion is different from mine, eh? She actually sounded confused once she got on the serious atheist train, because she would talk about how it’s all randomness but somehow she got this wonderful little Chinese girl out of all the children in the world. I felt sorry for her little girl, actually. I don’t know how you would raise a child (or why you would) if you think it’s all over when your body dies. What’s the point?
She had me at the beginning, when she said she was searching for meaning, trying to understand why she was alive. It’s the same stuff that got me started, way back in Catholic school when I was a kid. Why do I exist? For me that led to finding what I believe is my life’s purpose just a few months ago, though I have to admit I’ve been moving rather slowly on it since, well, January. Since this snowstorm kicked up, I really haven’t done anything. Every time I think of something I should do for Cielem’el or the book publishing, I seem to need the Internet, which is still down though I would think the house satellite should be clear by now, if its heaters are really working. I have to go outside and check that.
But between being cold and not having power while getting the biggest snowfall I’ve ever seen out here, I haven’t gotten any Cielem’el work done. It is Sunday, but that doesn’t matter. Cielem’el deserves my attention every day of the week. I can’t (don’t) help people by sitting on my ass doing nothing.
Anyway, I’m not quite sure how to describe how I feel after seeing that movie. I know I’d like to watch it again with Dad, not that he’ll like the ending either. Nor will he like her Bible stories. Heck, maybe watching it with him is a very bad idea. But it’s interesting mental fodder. It’ll give me something to think about as I head out on a long RV trip.
Traveling with Flat Stanley
This RV trip has been expanded from a brief visit to the coast because of a letter I received in the mail from my nephew, Cameron. It included a folded colored little boy that Cameron said was Flat Stanley, and Cameron asked me to take Flat Stanley with me and take pictures and write him a letter about the places I went with Flat Stanley. It’s for a class project Cameron is doing at his school. So my RV trip has taken on a bit different roadmap, going about three thousand miles out of route from the 1,800-mile direct route from my house in Cali to my family’s place in the Midwest. I’ll be taking pictures along the way and writing about the journey for Cameron’s class project, and I’ll probably be posting that to my blog as I go as well. I don’t know if I’ll have the hands for much journaling after writing something for Cameron each day, but you never know. This is definitely a journey of both body and mind. I have practically no plans or expectations, I only know that I’m going to take my time on this trip and clear my head along the way.