The Brokenness of Me

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
Dalai Lama

If our outer  lives represent what is going inside...

I find myself thinking about my life lately...looking back and trying to make sense of it.  If our life represents what is going on inside, then I am one heck of a mess...let me tell ya!   Could my inner world be  really as chaotic as all this? Can a person be that broken and messed up? The "brokenness of me" is something I do not even know how to begin describing if it is anything at all represented by the brokenness of my surroundings.

The last ten years ...the last 20 years...heck the last 50 years lol (I laugh out loud but at the same time I am serious) ...have been equipped with one external stressor, one trauma, one very challenging life lesson after the next. It seems that I barely have time to breathe between the stressors. Before I even recapture my balance from one event another one lands on me. 

Some of the challenges are extraordinary.  (I could write a book about my life and people would shake their heads in disbelief).  Many are big enough to make people walk away in discomfort after they politely ask how things are  and others are not so big on an externally measured scale but draining just the same. 

Punches from the Universe?

I know rationally that these stressors are not as I perceive them ...but they all feel like punches from the universe when they first hit, meant to punish and knock me down...to keep me down where I mistakenly believe I deserve to be.  One too many punches and I start feeling that this is true and I don't want to try to get back up again. I feel a bit  beat up, punch drunk and numb at times.  I don't like being here...in this place where I stand with  hands over my face guarding the unbroken pieces I have left inside me.

How do I manage to get through life like this? 

I try to shake off each stressor, minimize it, deny the sting of it, or close my eyes until this batch is over.  Like an abused lover I make excuses for it and pretend it is all good.  If people ask me how I am doing...I give them what they want...and say I am "phine" so they don't worry.  I pull away and hide away from eyes that may judge or add more pain. And I always wait...wait for the next punch to hit me. It becomes about protecting myself from the punches...not about living.  I numb myself from pain and when I do I numb myself from life. 

I tell myself if only...if only had a some space between the things that land upon me...some recovery time...if I could just get my feet beneath me and balance myself I would be better prepared  for the next onslaught.  With a little more recovery time...I tell myself... I can heal the broken pieces so I am stronger for the next time life gets challenging...but it seems that life does not want to cooperate. There are just too many external stressors and they are coming too fast.  Like I said...not all of them are big...but after a big blow, or a series of moderate ones...when you are still fighting to regain your balance... it only takes  the lightest nudge to bring you down.

An Example

I won't bore you with the details of my life but I will give you one example.   I got to the point, a few years back, where my trauma eventually cut into the flesh of my body.  The physical symptoms  became undeniable...I get sick and go off work.  Knowing the relationship between stress and health, past trauma and illness...I tell myself when I am going off that I am going to make the best of this time...it will be my recovery time, my healing time from everything. 

I have paid into a disability insurance for years and seeing the need for it and my right to it ...I apply for it.  I am refused by my insurance company and left pretty much financially destitute with more stress than anyone should ever have to deal with.  So my recovery time becomes survival time...and my attention can no longer go to getting better physically let alone once and for all...but to worrying about how I am going to care for my children, keep the house, pay the bills when so much other stuff is going on. 

I endure sleepless nights.  I cash  in everything I have worked so hard for, borrowing and begging. I go into extreme debt.  I prepare more than once to go bankrupt and give up my house and everything I have left, struggling with the knowledge that I would have to give up my children to their Dad until I got on my feet again...if I ever got on my feet again. All the while I am dealing with legitimate physical symptoms that others in my family have died from or suffered life threatening crisis's with.

  Yet I am told my condition isn't real and I am not only denied but my integrity is questioned.  As a result, I don't get the help I need medically to get better!  Blow after blow, after blow, after blow!  And this is only one of the moderate stressors on the scale of stressors I had to deal with over the last 10 years.  It pales in comparison to some of the others.

So much Coming at us at Once

There appears to be  so much coming at me all the time from all directions: Big stress, little stress, every size stress.   My mind is constantly whirling as I try to organize them by priority into what has to be dealt with right away and what can be left to later.  What can I ignore and what is urgent?  I may have a pretty good filing system up there in my head...  I would have to...to get as far as I did... but it is obviously not good enough.  Sometimes I misfile or forget to file and these things I forgot about, or resisted, or avoided, or numbed from  come to visit me at night demanding my attention.  

As I did last night, I often find myself in the wee hours of the night looking up and saying to the shadows on my wall, " This is exhausting! I am so bloody tired!!!! I just want the whirring to stop.  I just want peace.  I want a life where I am not constantly having to deal with crisis.  Is that too much to ask?"

A Point to all this whining

Now I didn't write this long spiel  so I could feel sorry for myself ( well maybe a little :)).  I am not going to leave you with this negativity.  There is a point to all my rambling.  The major point is this: Asking for peace is not a big thing to ask at all.  It is only the beginning of what I could ask for and receive. Peace is my birthright!  

So why do I feel so bloody beat up and far from peaceful at times?  Because I choose to believe otherwise.  I am choosing to subscribe to those belief s ingrained in the grey matter of my sub conscious mind...that I am not worthy of anything but punishment.  I choose to believe that.    I  put myself in an imaginary ring and I keep myself there.  I vibrate at that energy.  I breathe out at that energy....and life gives me back what I breathe out.

I focus on the negative and unwanted events instead of the peaceful pauses that exist between them.  What I focus on persists.

I assume crisis, I perceive crisis, I accept crisis as my fate...so I unintentionally create crisis.  I created this life I see all around me. It does represent what is going on inside.  I am responsible for it.  

The Mistake of Focusing Outward rather than Inward

I mistakenly focus outward instead of inward. Life doesn't intend this  chaos for me...this is not what life is meant to be all about.  Life gives spaces...between each inhale and exhale of living there is a precious peaceful space...it is there if we pay attention to it.  So caught up in my own beliefs about what I assumed life was...I forgot to pay attention to what life really is...that is why I no longer feel the recovery pause of peace between my inhale and exhale.  I am hyperventilating my way through life. I am blaming life for keeping me down with its quick, never ending jabs but the truth is, the only thing that is punching me...is me.  The only thing keeping me here...is me.  The only thing that is drawing in these crazy stressors is me.

So what do I do? 

If I want peace I go inward to the perceived brokenness of me and I fix that.  I don't waste my time on the things that are happening outside of me....no matter how big or how many there seems to be.  I concentrate on the inside.   Until I bring order inside, I will have no order outside. 

How?

It is so simple.  I find the space.  I find the space between the breath.  I mean that literally.  I meditate on the space between each breath because I know that is where my life really is.  I meditate and I breathe.  After every inhale I become aware of the beautiful peaceful pause that is there before the exhale begins.  That is where the present moment is...that is where peace is...that is where life is.

As the Lenten season begins, I make it a point to pray and meditate my way out of a ring I created.  I pray for peace and I will find peace.  I close my eyes and meditate on peace and I will find it where it always was ...in the unbroken me.

All is well in my world.