(#158/365) Offerings

"When repeated difficulties do arise, our first primal approach is to acknowledge what is present, naming, softly saying "sadness, sadness", "remembering, remembering" or whatever....." Jack Kornfield


Title: Whatever! Soda in Singapore
Flickr user Anna R

saving words

I really struggle with the over use of some words until they become automatic. My biggest over-used set of three words is "I am sorry" - i respond with it instinctively in almost every situation - apologizing for things that are HARDLY my fault. Dave gently calls me on it - "why are you apologizing for that?" - but I've been doing some thinking on it.

Take for instance - when I reply to an email two days after receiving it, the very first thing my brain insists on starting the email with is an obligatory "I’m sorry."

And lately I've caught myself - I ask "Have I done something wrong? Do I really feel sorry? What am I gaining as a result of saying this? Does the reader even see the words - or are they programmed to receive it as I am to say it - so its a net gain/loss of zero?"

In meditation I stopped one day and repeated the words “I’m sorry” over and over. It became like a tidal wave in my head. It created a tightness subtly bunching up in the pit of my stomach. I felt the impact of the words and then realized that I rarely have stuff to apologize for - but I'm doing it CONSTANTLY.

It occurred to me that I was experiencing and creating the tidal wave of feelings; that programmed response of guilt each time I say the words “I’m sorry”, even when casually used. In meditation, and even my unconscious, my mind notices all this. If we repeatedly tell it that we are sorry for trivial things, then it will note down that we have done something wrong, thus polluting our internal space, unnecessarily. and finally - i think my subconscious knew better and started raising flags instead of letting the waves start up.

The more we repeat these words, the more we dilute their meaning (like folks that say I love you every ten seconds to the point where it's like Hello instead of a deliberate communication of love).

People are incredibly sensitive creatures, (I am one of them!), and can sense when we don’t genuinely feel sorry. This may come off as insincere to them. So we’re better off by not saying it. My new goal is to reserve the words I’m sorry to situations when I really mean it, and need it to express my genuine feelings.

Piano Update

Week 7 of piano lessons. tonight - I learn how the pedals work and what they do. I'm still love love loving it!

EARWORM OF THE WEEK: EDELWEISS!!!

Thinking Place

I moved my thinking items around next to my monitor tonight to keep them in clearer view:

the buddha, the new guinea fertility carving, the sounding bowl, a sea dollar i have owned since I was six, a glass etching of a killer whale my mother gave me for my 40th birthday, varnished boomerang of driftwood I've owned since I was nine, seashells, a rock and a crystal from Joseph's altar, the wooden bear box with Joseph's nipple rings inside, a mexican vase from the copper canyon in mexico, two rocks from the Hermit's Grove in Kirkland Washington.