Monkey Fodder

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years - I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue. - Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love.

Day 100. The Big One-Oh-Oh. Such a symmetrical number. A century of blogs. Triple digits. APoxOnMyBlog is One Hundred Days Old. It's Golden! Magnificent.

Alrighty, then. As my teacher would say on the day after my Enlightenment: "Get your butt on your cushion." Life goes on. Another moment in which to be fully present. Be here now. Wash your cup. There is nothing to attain. Let go your attachments. Just this. Sit zazen as if engaged in the fight for your life . . . . and other nonsensical jargon on which this lifestyle I call Zen rests . . . . By the way, I believe it all.

I feel as though I should have planned something grand and celebratory for this night. One hundred blogs does, indeed, feel like a milestone. Not that there is anything to attain. It kind of crept up on me. This week has actually been quite odd. The chaotic tornadoes on Monday evening sort of threw a weird wrench into the rhythm of the week. All my clients concur. It takes some fairly funky weather to give Oklahomans pause, but Monday night accomplished just that. I think we're all raising our eyebrows, scrunching our noses, shaking our heads, and saying, "What the f*** was that?" (Except for the Baptists, who don't cuss). When you can detect a tremor in the voices of our trusty and seasoned (and ferociously histrionic) TV weather announcers, you know something is up. Something swirly and reckless and massively destructive is up.

So I have nothing momentous to blog on this historic night. Instead, I will write what I learned about myself today. I have seen ______ (insert one of those obscene and unfathomable numbers from the media here) clients this week. I love my work; truly I do. I demand a lot of myself when it comes to my practice(s). My clients might not agree, (oops - just felt a tremendous attachment to the idea that they do) but I genuinely try to be fully present and engaged with each and every one of them. Each and every session. When I am no longer able to do that, or no longer desire to, I'm walking out of my office, locking the door, and throwing away the key. My work is meaningful and stimulating. I am extraordinarily lucky.

As I walked up the sidewalk to my front door this evening, I felt brain dead. Like, literally, I would flatline on an EEG. If someone asked me at that moment, "What are you thinking?" and I said, "Nothing," it would be the absolute, honest truth. My synaptic clefts had temporarily stopped transporting energy from one neuron to the next. I paused on the porch, asking myself, "Where is this emptiness when I sit on my cushion?"

My brain rockets along like a bullet train all day long. More like the fireworks finale on the Chinese New Year - continuous interconnected explosions with dwindling sparks snaking down. Like the hands of a journeyman carpenter working her lathe, I can ply my trade with speed, precision, gentle curves, and fine, crisp lines. I am a psychodynamic practitioner, which means I hold many pieces of seemingly disparate information in my memory, synthesize and integrate them, and present them in a cohesive and comprehensible whole to my clients. I make connections, weaving abstract and subtle threads into a tapestry depicting a recognizable scene. My thought process must be crisp and razor sharp to accomplish this. The goal is to make sense of nonsense. Order out of chaos. Understanding out of confusion. Compassion out of self-loathing. It can be a very rewarding vocation.

For a brain wired like mine, work like this provides the same kind of bliss that windy days give Katy the Border Collie. You remember: the dog that weaves around catching and depositing blowing leaves across our acre. We love a challenge. We adore applying our gifts. It is blissful to manifest our talents and indulge our instincts. The therapy room provides a daily arena conducive to crispness of thought. Plying my trade keeps the synapses popping and the razor edge glistening. This is flow. This is heaven. A glimpse of Nirvana.

Unfortunately, brains like mine and Katy's also require exorbitant amounts of energy to focus. That's good - we are highly energetic beings; however, one can only sustain such an energy expenditure for so long. When I come home at the end of the day, collecting my thoughts is like herding cats. They won't come together. What I learned about myself today is that this aspect of myself - this psychologist aspect -- definitely feeds the Monkeys. By the end of a work day, the mental discipline required to purposefully channel my complex cognition into meaningful interpretations for my clients has dissolved into silly putty. Silly is the operative word here. When I perch on my cushion desiring to silence the raucous melee in my head, no wonder the Monkeys chatter! They are ready to party. Enough with the concentration! Out with the ego! They want stream of consciousness. Disorganization. Bring on some silly, pointless prattle.

This is a useful epiphany for me. Useful because it reconciles some genuine and important facets of my Self. Useful because it lends to compassion and patience with myself for the eternal chattering of the Monkeys. Useful because, er, well, it is an integration and synthesis of seemingly disparate information into a cohesive and comprehensive whole (hee hee). Useful because I am the benefactress of my own effort.

Happy 100th Blog, CycleBuddhaDoc. Gassho.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc