Time flying...

I am sitting here with calendars, flight schedules, work dates and trying to figure out my commitments over the next few months so I can plan trips to the USA for work, dates in London and time for myself. I still have real problems setting my priorities correctly. I put work first, assume I have the stamina of an 18 year old and inevitably wind up exhausted, tearful and anxious.


This time I am determined to do it differently. I will put myself and my needs first and then set up my work schedule. I say that with great confidence now, but my resolve so easily crumbles in the face of client needs. I guess I still have the same old need to be needed that I always had. Some things don't change, but this time... I live in hope.


I returned from the USA both infused with the joy of chanting with wonderful kirtan chanters and exhausted from travelling so much in such a short space of time. Today feels like the first day since my return that my body felt even part way recovered from the mad rushing about - so what did I do? Did I relax and enjoy my body's beginning to return to normal? No! I had to go shopping. Some folks have their drug, alcohol, TV addictions, I have my shopping. I managed to return home just before everything started to hurt again and I consider this an achievement. I am learning to listen to myself a little bit.


The seemingly sudden arrival of autumn has sent me into a bit of a spin. The summer slipped through my fingers before I had a chance to really grab it and now autumn is here. The trees are changing colour and there is that colder feel in the air. Soon the clocks go back and there you are - another winter arriving.


This year is different. In a few weeks I go off on my week long retreat. I am loathe to voice where and why since this feels like an extremely personal journey to the dark side of the planet. Every time I tell someone where I am going for this retreat I get their particular viewpoint. I understand that what I am doing is somewhat extreme, perhaps a bit bizarre and for sure, challenging.  I deeply and completely know that this is the right thing for me to be doing. My history is a present part of me. How to explain this. I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few weeks and I have come to this - at some point in my life I knew that I would visit Auschwitz, the concentration camp that both my parents were in. I also knew that there was no possibility that I would want to visit this unhealed place as part of an afternoon tourist party on a day trip from Krakow. When I saw that there was a retreat to Auschwitz that was being led by a group of Buddhists, with the involvement of all faiths and all nationalities for a week in early November, I realised that this was something I wanted, needed and felt magnetically pulled to do. I need to walk that ground, to explore what there is there for me and to put together some of the fractured pieces of my past in order to live more fully in the present. Sounds wooly, doesn't it? Well, it sort of it. I have no idea what there will be waiting for me in Poland. I trust that whatever it is, is right for me. I will let you know.


Meanwhile I am filled with an autumnal sense of longing. Huh??  Yearning for the missing bits of my life, the warmth of friendships, the joys of small things in the day that I sometimes forget to notice, the meditative times I let slip by. As another summer passes I feel like all the things I love are right here and yet so much is still just out of my reach. Pretty frustrating to know that I have everything I need, want, imagine or desire to make my life and more importantly, my self, complete and that I still watch things pass by, as if in a movie of someone else's life. 


Kindness and compassion towards my self, towards everyone and everything around me seems like the only 'right' action now. I watch my living movie and also welcome the future episodes - this series will run and run. All I have to do is stay still long enough.