Don't Carry It All

I crawled in bed tonight at 9:30pm, excited to get to bed early after rising at 4:30am to go to practice. Alas, I didn't fall asleep as quickly as I hoped. When I'd been lying in bed for about 20 minutes trying to fall asleep, my ipod alarm clock spontaneously came on, as if to say: "Wait. Don't go to bed yet. You haven't written your blog. Here's a song to mark your day:"

Don't carry it all
Don't carry it all
Don't carry it all
Don't carry it --

Wake up like giants, so tall
With open eyes like Judas and Paul
And John

After all you done
Don't carry it all

Don't carry it all
Don't carry it all
Don't carry it all

I like it. Not the fact that the ipod's bright light shone and it started to play this song when I wanted to be asleep, mind you, but I like the message. I do tend to carry a lot. Probably more than is healthy. I was talking to a friend the other night about my breakup and she said something very telling. She said: "You tried to have this relationship for both of you and now you're trying to have the breakup for both of you."

Harsh? Nah. Honest. And I needed to hear it.

As I work toward putting down this relationship -- its successes and its failures -- sometimes it can be hard to be gentle with myself. Why did I tolerate something that so many others saw the fatal flaw -- my ex's lack of presence much of the time -- long before I was willing to acknowledge it? I can answer that. Because I was merely repeating a pattern I learned in childhood (since both my mother and my father are like that), and so: 1) I thought maybe it was enough, 2) I thought maybe it would change, and 3) I thought I could be the one to help change it. Alas: 1) It wasn't, 2) It didn't, 3) I couldn't.

Don't carry it all

Don't carry it all
Don't carry it all
Don't carry it all

Thanks for the reminder, Low. But as someone who carried secrets for the first 35 years of her life, carrying it all is what comes naturally to me. Putting it down I have to work at.

But I do work at it. Every day. There is a moment at the tail end of my yoga practice -- when I do the closing chant -- where I always feel the possibility of the perfect peace of sheer being. Without all the attachments. Without all the cravings. Without all the anger, worry or frustration. It comes when I repeat the words: Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi, which means peace peace perfect peace. I glimpse that perfect peace every day. And it's enough to get me out of bed the next morning to practice, even when I don't get to bed as early as I'd like sometimes...