Several weeks after I had closed-out my exchange with Mae Neecha I went back to review our Line chat and see if I could squeeze any more wisdom juice out of it. I saw the following exchange: A: I still think I can use my cute yellow purse to convince people of my awesomeness even if I don’t really control the bag itself. Actually, I think I can convince some people some of the time. But that is enough… MN: If its…
A Post ‘Course Correction’ Plan for Further Progress A: I think I have a plan for right now: 1) look for evidence that shit doesn’t turn out like I expect and see both sides/full picture more clearly ( example: the restaurant we are on last night had good food, but the seat cushions were all stained and it disgusted me). 2) look specifically at my belongings. What are their nature (4e) where do they come from, go, how do we…
This blog is a direct continuation of the 6th, so if you haven’t covered it yet, please head back there to read that one first. In that blog we explored how rupa forms the foundation for concepts like love, hate, goodness, cleanliness, etc. We left off with a simple question I had for Mae Neecha: What is the rest of the story? Here we will recap a bit and then launch into ‘the rest of the story’, which really amounts…
So, a little warning Dear Readers: This next blog is a bit our of order. It is a continuation of the Part 5 blog and will start out exactly like that blog and then go in a completely separate direction. So, if a few sentences in you have that creeping deja vu feeling, please press-on my friends. “How can this be?” you may be asking… “I thought you were trying to give a blow-by-blow as close to real action report…
On to the Hard Stuff…This blog is a direct continuation of the last, so if you haven’t covered it yet, please head back there to read that one first. As a recap: the last few blogs have pivoted off of questions Mae Neecha had asked me early in our conversation: “Is hot and cold generally the same for humans? For instance, desert temperatures are hot, arctic temperatures are cold? Is human hot and cold the same is kangaroo hot and…
Rupa Beyond the Basics – How Rupa Lies at the Foundation of Concepts Like Safe, Clean, Good, Etc. If I understand what rupa is –alternating, shifting, decaying arrangements of 4es – and I am still consumed by desire for it, it points to another problem: I am dazzled by what I think rupa represents, what it MEANS, or what it guarantees. That, and I don’t truly see its shadow side, the pain and suffering it delivers to my life. I don’t yet feel exhausted by its impermanence, its unreliability…Ugh, clearly,…
Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here. A little summery/context/extra info: The dialog below essentially captures the process through which I began to understand how the 4 elements work to make up every physical form in this world. Truth be told, for a long practicing Buddhist, I had a really poor grasp on this ‘101…
Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here. A Roundabout Way to Discovering I Need to Understand Rupa+Nama MN: What do you feel about this? https://youtu.be/bMYGYY-WunE A: So on the video I feel nothing extreme. But the reason is I don’t, in my heart, view eggs as babies so no fodder to excited my heart. But…
Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here. Following my big retreat contemplation, Mae Neecha was a massive help ‘course correcting ‘ and rounding out my contemplation. For the next week or so she was my virtual sherpa, helping prod me, guide me and answer questions through an ongoing Line Chat. There is so much content in…
Hello Dear Readers — recently I have had a few folks ask me what I have been contemplating on lately, so I thought, “What the hell…why not kick off the New Year with another sequence of ‘Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Program’ blogs to share a few of those aha moments that have come to me recently. So, here we are, about to get all out of order again ;). In the next couple of blogs I will share a…
For those of you who are just tuning-in, my new home, New York, is not all I had hoped it would be. Its not what I had imagined. See before the move, I thought my life here would be fun and exciting. I thought my house would be mine, be beautiful, and make life easy. I had a fantasy of Eric and my loving charmed life together, of us embracing the challenges that arose, like a fun new adventure. I was…
As part of our move to New York, Eric and I bought a new home in Lower Manhattan. We had seen it once, while he was here interviewing with his new company, and we fell in love at first sight. As soon as we stepped into the sunny loft space we began to imagine our life there — Eric cooking in the chef’s kitchen, me lounging by the fireplace, all the rooms open to each other so we could feel together…
I am surrounded by, swimming in, a sea of my stuff. I can look at each item and remember how badly I wanted it back when I bought it. My heart believed that that table/rug/lamp would solve my problems, fit perfectly in my space, make my home beautiful. That by extension, these items would make me a sort of person — the sort of person that values beauty, surrounds myself with it, cares enough to have a lovely home filled with…
I keep catching myself whispering the secret-not-so-secret mantra, “I wish I could just go home to San Francisco.” I miss my friends, my house, my routines, I miss my old life and I want it back. But spoiler alert, its not possible, there is no going back. After-all, what would going back really look like? My husband’s job is here now, am I going to go back without him? Or go back with both of us unemployed? In either case,…
Dear Reader — When I first made the big NY mistake ove, I did a brief blog series, ‘Interrupting our Regularly Scheduled Programming’ of an orderly progression of my path and instead offered some real-time insights about my move. Now, I have finally caught-up to moving day and would like to put these blogs back into the ‘proper’ order. So, for those of you long-time readers, you are going to see a few familiar posts, but with the new context, and…
Please bear with me Dear Reader. This particular blog post is not exactly a Dharma moment. There is no deep reflection, no further questions to pursue, no moral to the story. This is just a little context that I think it is important for you to be aware of before we launch into the New York saga. I had been pretty happy in San Francisco for many years. But my husband, Eric, struggled with his job and was looking for…
In October 2016 Eric and I left our home of almost a decade, San Francisco, for New York City. Lets just say it wasn’t the cupcake and rainbow experience we were expecting. It was dark. Very dark… In New York, sleeping dragons awoke; monstrous sides of my personality, that in sunny San Francisco had lain latent so long I foolishly though had disappeared, came to haunt me. There was hateful Alana. So angry I could kill Alana. Struggles with depression…
It has been over 3 years since I began this blog and, before we move to the next ‘chapter’, I want to reflect from the present day perspective a bit about some of what I have learned. The blog idea originally came from Neecha, but back when she suggested it –over 7 years ago — I felt like I was not ready to share my practice with the world, frankly I felt like doing so would make me a fraud:…
Before we set sail to New York, Eric and I decided to go on a 3 week holiday to Europe. I planned every last detail, booked us in the nicest hotels, chose upgraded flight seats, researched the best activities and routs. With so much prepping, preparing and thoughtful packed I couldn’t imagine anything going wrong. But, its travel –its life–so of course, plenty did go wrong. Some stuff was just inconvenience, some funny missteps or misunderstandings. But there were a couple of incidents…
