Meditation Broke Me

All I did yesterday was lie on the couch meditating.

(Where “all I did” also includes eating, petting cats, falling asleep while meditating, and watching Outlander.)

For the past few days, I kept getting “go in” “time to meditate” and “stop procrastinating, Amber”. So I finally collapsed onto the couch four separate times and went down into the quantum layers of my being. Which is a fancy way of saying “lying on the couch doing nothing.”

Here’s what I interpret as Quantum Being Layers: I would shut my eyes and be taken somewhere - to a crystal cave, to the depths of my shadowy here’s-where-I’m-going-to-stuff-everything-I-don’t-want-to-deal-with, to a field where my guides would show up and say things. Basically, I just try to shut up my brain and let my soul take the wheel and show me what needs to happen.

The first meditation was great - I loved all the orphaned pieces of myself until I felt whole again. The next two meditations were murkier - I fell into old patterns of feeling like I had to manipulate light and fix myself (implying that I am broken) and generally just working really hard, rather than resting and receiving.

After I trudged into the kitchen after the third meditation - looking a lot more bedraggled than before I started - my boyfriend said “I think meditation broke you” which was fair.

So for the last meditation, I did my best to just love all the bits of myself that I want to shove away and blame for the parts of my life that I don’t like so much.

This is a time for us to quiet. To rest. To return to ourselves and the deepest layers that are asking for love and attention.

(It’s also a time to watch Outlander and pet cats.)

There’s no way to do this strange moment in time wrong. Just keep asking to be shown and given what you need, and trust that it will show up in the right way at the right time and, yes, I really hope that also works for toilet paper.

How To Thrive In Social Isolation

I’ve been reading up on the coronavirus and COVID-19 and it seems like these extreme-feeling social isolation measures are absolutely the best thing we can do to support each other right now.

Luckily, I’ve spent the last year and a half preparing for this exact moment in history.

Weirdly extreme social isolation: check!

Constant grinding fear about money / resources: check!

Incessant Netflix streaming: check!

Since “the universe was preparing me to be of service in this moment” is a much better thought than “Amber does life wrong,” I’m going with Being Prepared By The Universe. Always go with the thought that feels better rather than the thought that feels worse.

So How Do We Thrive In Unprecedented Times?

Give yourself a minute. You don’t need to immediately learn Danish or to play the medieval lute. Let yourself rest. Let yourself process. Let yourself cry. Let yourself grieve. Let yourself watch Netflix for hours. A lot of “Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the epidemic!” has been going around the internet lately, to which I say: If you diving into your novel or screenplay feels good, fan-fucking-tastic. Write things for us to read. If not, please allow me to remind you that you aren’t responsible for writing King Lear right now.

Don’t judge yourself for having feelings. You’re allowed to have feelings! You’re allowed to cry! Feel them as sensations in your body without thinking about what the feeling means. Breathe with them. Move with them. Yell them into a pillow. Shake them out.

If panic or fear sets in, soothe yourself. Our brains have been trained to panic our entire life. When you feel your thoughts careening around the hamster wheel of crazy, take a moment to soothe your nervous system.

• Breathe into your belly. As much air as you can hold, then let it all out. Repeat.

• Tap the top of your head and over your heart while saying or thinking “I have everything I need. I am safe. I am well.” Use whatever words feel the most supportive in the moment.

• Anchor yourself into the present moment. Look around at the room you’re in. What do you see? What color catches your eye? How does the air feel? What do you smell?

• Lie on the ground. The ground is a constant. It’s always there to hold and support you. Lying on the grass or putting your back up against a tree will reset your entire system. But if that’s not available, lying on your living room floor will also do the trick.

• Drop all your thoughts into your heart. Imagine all your thoughts and feelings funneling into your heart space. Your heart will dissolve anything you don’t need, and return anything you do need at a time when you can look at it more easily.

• Treat your feelings like a toddler. It just wants some attention. Ask it what it needs and how you can help. It may even give you some randomly profound message.

Let things change. We are living in unprecedented times. But we humans are incredibly adaptable. Let yourself pivot. Invite in the idea that you can thrive in this moment, whatever it looks like for you personally. That you can have more than enough (without hoarding toilet paper). That you can do great work. Love and be loved. Enjoy your life even in circumstances that look deeply limiting.

There are answers beneath the noise. Let yourself get quiet. Your inner wisdom / higher self / whatever-you-like-to-call-it wants you to tune in so it can help you out with whatever you need and want.

Own your power. You are stronger than you know. You are more innovative than you realize. You are more powerful than you ever imagined. Start tapping into that deep vein of SWEET BABY UNICORN, WE’VE GOT THIS.

Send your words in the direction of health and wellbeing. It’s easy to doubt the power of words, especially if you’ve ever repeated “I have a million dollars, I have a million dollars, I have a million dollars!” and were not immediately serenaded by the nearest leprechaun as he hands you bags of cash.

While your immediate experience isn’t under your control - that does seem to be what this time is about - the way you view it is 100% your choice. See what fresh perspective is available to you in this moment.

This morning, I got quiet for the first time in a 72-hour Netflix binge. Almost as soon as I let myself be still, I heard this: “I now accept any healing and cellular upgrades that are in the highest good of my physical, mental, emotional, and energetic bodies. I now radiate hope. I now radiate light. I now radiate love. I am peace. Thank you.” As I repeated those words, I felt them rearranging me on a deep level.

Let yourself rearrange on a deep level. It’s time. We got this.

End Times

As of midnight tonight, a shelter in place order will be in effect for the San Francisco Bay Area. What does this mean?

It means that there’s no toilet paper or rice to be had across four counties. 

Our grandparents fought in a world war; I guess I can use less toilet paper.

Where I live in Sonoma County is technically exempt - or at least hasn’t made the order official yet - but never leaving the house is how I live my life, so I might as well keep doing that. Only now I get to call it “helping humanity.” 

You’re welcome, humans. 

In my adult life, I’ve lived through 9/11, the stock crash of ‘08, Hurricane Sandy on Staten Island, the election of Trump, and multiple Sonoma wildfires. Add that to so many personal life upheavals (breakups, miscarriage, death, severely uncertain finances) that I have a very “wait and see” attitude toward looming disaster. I’ve also learned recently that one of the signs of trauma is to become eerily calm when everyone around you is panicking. I do this. It’s a safe bet that the only time I’ll be able to successfully meditate is when the zombie apocalypse is upon us.

So from my state of eerie calm and “we’ll see”, the question on my mind is: at what point during the lockdown will it become socially acceptable to ask Twitter to moderate arguments? 

(Can he get mad at me because there isn’t enough butter in the cookies when he made the cookies but I wasn't in the kitchen to stop him from doing it wrong, Y/N.)

The other question is, how many pictures can I share of the cat before it gets obnoxious? 

Social distancing means helping the kitties with their Tinder profiles.

On Being a Gentle Observer (Instead of a Brutal Dictator)

Gray days are my favorite. I always feel less guilty for staying inside all day if rain is imminent, and any situation in which I feel less guilty instead of more guilty is a situation I enjoy.

I have an awful lot of guilt, especially for someone who wasn’t raised Catholic.

Sometimes I attribute this to my empathic nature - I’m sponging up everybody else’s guilt! - and while this may be part of it, mostly I just need to be firmer with myself.

Be the gentle observer of my thoughts, rather than the stern and temperamental disciplinarian. Watch instead of flagellate.

It sounds obvious, right? WHEN IN FACT IT IS VERY DIFFICULT. I could indulge in my usual rant on how we’ve been trained by society to be brutally tough on ourselves or I could just talk about how I’m doing my utmost to send my brain in the direction I want to go, rather than following its programmed whims to their unsatisfactory conclusion.

Therefore!

Here’s how I’m learning to be a gentle observer (as opposed to the brutal dictator):

• Notice what’s going on internally without judging my thoughts, my feelings, myself, or anyone else’s self.

• Remind myself twenty-seven times a day that I haven’t done anything wrong, that I’m doing enough, that I am enough, that everything is okay, that everything is - in fact - working out for my good.

• Breathe through anything that gets triggered or kicked up internally.

• If breathing doesn’t work and I find myself in a serious spin, do something to come back to neutral - like go for a walk or read a favorite book or watch something nourishing on Netflix.

• Once I’ve returned to neutral, do my best to identify the truth underneath the brain chatter.

What our brains spit out at us isn’t usually true, and it takes some investigative digging to move below the programmed responses and into the wiser self / still small voice / intuitive understanding / real-ass truth.

As an example, here is a thought I think almost daily: “I should have done more.”

On the surface it sounds very true, but that’s mostly because the world enjoys shouting about productivity and I eagerly sucked up all that shouting along with a number of How To Be Better Than You Are articles. (Sigh.)

Rule #1: Whenever a thought doesn’t feel good, that thought probably isn’t true. (Your soul is using your emotional GPS to steer you away from said untrue thought, because your soul is good at this stuff.)

So I dig a little deeper, because that “You didn’t do enough today!” thought doesn’t feel good and so, as per Rule #1, I do my best to question it before going too far down the Not Enough rabbit hole. “Is it really true that I should have gotten more done today?”

Rule #2: Anything your brain says you “should” do needs to be investigated further. Should is a bullshit word that should be eliminated from the English language. (Heh.)

When I go deeper than my brain’s basic trigger responses, I start to tap into my smarter self, who says something like, “That arbitrary number you’ve determined will make you worthy is not the thing that makes you worthy. You are enough when you believe you’re enough. You’ve done enough when you believe you’ve done enough.”

Uh, okay. Great. So how do I do that?

“Celebrate what you have done.”

Sounds great.

Hereby celebrating what I have done (please feel free to join me):

Got up this morning and put on socks. Cue Kool and the Gang singing Celebration!

Wrangled a gnarly-feeling financial issue. Good job, Amber!

Ate delicious roast beef sandwich while my boyfriend ate hot pastrami at a deli with peeling green paint and ridged tin siding that’s been open since 1947, facts that don’t matter but that I enjoyed. Well done, us!

Bought thank-you cards, an errand I have been unsuccessfully attempting for over a week now. Check!

Cat curled up next to me for a whole three minutes. Glory be!

Wrote this blog post to help myself remember all the things I already know (a more challenging task than it might sound) and also because I have a Write Every Day Because You Are A Goddamn Writer plan. Woohoo!

Made healthy lentil soup for dinner. It might even taste good!

I might do some yoga after this, which my body would really appreciate. Smug city!

To sum up, catch the mean thoughts, the thoughts that don’t feel good, the thoughts that are perpetuating cycles that we are all so goddamn over, and question their veracity. When they have been identified as Wholly Untrue, check into what is true. With a side order of celebrating what we did do. Because celebrating oneself is a darn good idea, whether the sun is shining or not.

When Cats Choose Their Own Litter Boxes

Our cats like to pee in the fireplace.

Because it’s warm, I guess? Maybe the residual heat makes it like the fancy heated toilet seats that I wish for at 3 in the morning when our bathroom is so cold my face oil freezes. (True story.) Who knows the mind of a cat? All I know is we find ashy paw prints all over the living room which are equal parts adorable and aggravating.

In case you’re an amateur astrology nerd like me, today is a full moon eclipse and Sunday is a planetary conjunction that only comes around once every 500 years. The last time the skies looked the way they will on Sunday, the Holy Roman Emperor still had a job and Europeans were still ten months away from figuring out there was a Pacific Ocean.

In the 1520s, the world was shifting in ways that still inform our world today. I keep feeling that 2020 is going to be a big year of expansion and transformation, and according to my amateur astrology nerd research, today’s lunar eclipse is in my sign (Cancer) which means - apparently - major transformations and rebirth in all areas of life. All right then. Bring it on, universe.

Meanwhile, the cats are still peeing in the fireplace and responding unfavorably to my attempts to involve them in my dance parties.

When faced with an unknown future and wild shifts, maybe the best thing to do is focus on the one moment in front of you, the one with uncooperative cats.

Before it ever occurred to them that peeing in the fireplace was an option.