Alana's Dharma Blog

I was sitting on the bathroom floor of my Manhattan loft, engaging in a-now-typical-ritual — crying my eyes out. I was miserable. I was so depressed. Above all else, I felt lost and trapped. The circumstances were this:  Eric and I were in debt for a house we hated. He had a 2 year contract at work that, if broken, would require a significant sum to pay back our relocation expenses. Besides, Eric worried about his career, his resume, and what it would look like if he ‘washed-out’ of a new job so quickly. I was so miserable, even though I loved Eric dearly, for one of the only times in our marriage,  I thought about leaving him. About going somewhere else, doing something else… only I didn’t even know where I would go…

In my hysterics, I started thinking about how I got here. Not about the decisions of the last few months that brought me to NY, I had already turned that particular set of mistakes over and over in my mind. What I couldn’t figure out is how I got myself so trapped. How I ended up in a life I despised despite all of my careful planning and effort. Despite having so much going for me: I had good health, plenty of money, a graduate degree with honors, an accomplished career with plenty of folks to vouch for my skills.  I had a husband who loved and supported me, a close-knit family and a handful of good friends who would take me in if I asked.  I felt like I should have choices, options. After all,  these are the things I always believed would prepare me for the world, would guarantee a good life. So how on earth was it that I felt so utterly trapped? Helpless? Armed with all these ‘weapons’, yet I struggled to find a move, a plan for attack, a way out of my situation. All I could do was wait.

Obviously, nothing stays still. Over the coming months, my situation shifted — I found comfort in an out of town retreat, new possibilities when my old job invited me to come back and I could split time between SF and NY, my hate tapered, my perspective changed. But I can still viscerally remember the extreme feeling of being trapped, immobilized, on the bathroom floor that day. The power of that feeling has made me realize something else … I can prepare all I want. I can stack-up every advantage I can muster. I can imagine that the skills, personality, favor, etc, that I build will allow me to control my life. That it will give me options and freedom. But, in the end, I am not the master of my life. And, if I am not the master of my own life, can I really expect to be master of anything at all?

I was out for a walk and I saw a swirl of leaves blowing around in the wind. I decided to try to use it as an Ubai, a metaphor for my own confused and upended life. I closed my eyes and began to imagine my own objects, details of places and people, from my Cali and NY life, swirling around me. All out of my control, moved by forces beyond myself.

Suddenly, I opened my eyes and realized I had made a huge mistake…the leaves out in nature were swirling around each other, moving this way and that in the wind, a constant changing mass. But in my own mind, I twisted the scene, I ‘internalized’ everything, those ‘metaphorical leaves’, swirling around me — I was the sun, the gravitational force around which these objects, people and places all revolved.

My little Ubai exercise had unmasked ego, the lie of alana-centricism quietly lurking beneath even my most ardent efforts to contemplate my limited control. This, I realized, was the deep extent to which my view of myself and this world are poisoned. At the time, I didn’t press any further. Now, years later, I frequently get a flash in my mind of swirling leaves and it reminds me to double check on that ego.

And … because sometimes suffering and delusion  just don’t end overnight … a second pestering email, written several weeks after the first, to Neecha, and her skillful response.

Alana’s Second Email to Neecha

Hey Neecha —

After about 2 month down in the dumps I finally decided to reach out to Neecha  for some advice on how to deal with the extreme stress and sorrow of my new New York life. When I think back on it, I realize that her advice was some of the best anyone has ever given me. SPOILER ALERT –Impermanence, impermanence, impermanence, death, death, death.

Its funny because now, almost 3 years later, I see my hatred of New York fading and I can trace the reason for this reduced hatred to my Dharma  contemplations: I have come to realize that all circumstances are temporary (on loan) and they don’t prove who I am. Had I understood that back when I moved, when I tried to make NY mine (or rather rejected it as ‘not mine’, i.e. a threat to myself/the identity I wanted to build) I would have suffered so much less. I would have made my loved ones suffer so much less. But, this is now. In the next two blogs I will share my exchanges with Neecha back then…

 Alana’s Email to Neecha

Hey Neecha —

Neecha’s Reply to Alana

Alana,