"I wish I could go insane sometimes..."

[Guest guest]

Oh, God, I am not strong enough. I can write; I can joke; but I cannot

cure my own heartache. The irony is that I know that nothing will take

it away. I would choose insanity if I could, but choice has nothing to

do with things like that. My teacher said, "When you are carrying your

cross up Crucifixion Hill, offer no resistance whatever."

 

~Vicki aka Vivki*

 

 

“What’s the lover to do,

but humiliate himself,

and wander your rooms?

 

If he kisses your hair,

Don’t wonder why.

 

Sometimes in the madhouse

They gnaw on their chains.”

 

~Rumi

 

 

Dear Vivki, Vicki,

 

*(Actually, I just typed “Vicki,” and again as always, it strikes

itself into the key of “Vivki,” which leads me to the remembrance of

Vivikenanda and yadda yadda I’ve got quotes about and/or from him

then rising to the fore and announcing, “This will do for what you're

saying, trying to say…”)

 

 

“In the beginning students of yoga are taught to meditate by focusing

on a mantra, the breath, or perhaps the image of a guru or great

teacher. This is extremely difficult because it is the nature of the

mind to jump around from idea to idea, from sensation to sensation. In

fact, Swami Vivikenanda called the mind drunken monkey when he

introduced meditation to the US at the end of the 19th century at the

Chicago World's Fair. Learning to meditate is first learning to teach

the body to sit still. When this is accomplished, one cannot help but

notice by contrast how un-still the mind is. Therefore I do not

consider meditation to be a time in which I am quieting my mind or

pacifying my mind, trying to quiet something that by nature is never

quiet. Instead I pay total attention to the agitations which are my

thoughts. My thoughts may continue, but it is the act of paying

uninterrupted attention to my thoughts which is the meditation.

Meditation is not some dreamy state in which thoughts do not happen

at all.”

 

~Judith H. Lasater

 

 

You wrote, “I would choose insanity if I could…” and that line really

jumped out at me and it’s stuck with me since you posted it. I wanted

to comment on it and share my own experience of such an idea.

 

When I was younger, in my early twenties, I was quite the suicide

maven with many attempts and many hospitalizations in the psychiatric

wards for this “illegal activity.” I came to know intimately the

phrase “51/50.”

 

There were times when I felt I could not endure life in the world,

could not bear another day bearing another day. There were times when

I admitted myself to the hospital, allowed myself to “go insane,” to

get away, to avoid facing the things that were intolerable to endure,

or so I tried to make myself believe. I never got away and none of the

unbearable things went away, even if I tried to lose myself in

insanity, for there was always the return to the world, to my life in

the world and the things and experiences that appalled me and I tried

to flee were always there waiting to take up with me again where we

had left off.

 

Insanity was just a pause in the performance, an off-wing thing where

the dancer cracks her aching back or pops a pill to prepare for the

next thrilling entrance, an entrance that must always come before the

curtain goes down on the final performance.

 

We keep dancing the dance, and sometimes the dance is done in prison,

in chains and darkness, in madhouses of the mind, in hell’s hallway

of the head.

 

And there are those who come along and lift us, help us get back on

track, ease the broken back we try to dance with, and you are that to

me. Ala Rumi –

 

 

“When I remember your love,

I weep, and when I hear people

Talking of you,

Something in my chest,

Where nothing much happens now,

Moves as in sleep.”

 

 

During one of the suicide ventures, “I died.”

 

 

“I placed one foot on the wide plain

of death, and some grand

immensity sounded on the emptiness.

 

I have felt nothing ever

Like the wild wonder of that moment.”

 

~Rumi

 

 

You bring back again and again to that wild, wondrous moment with

everything you share of your life and Bob’s life. Thank you again,

Vivki, Vicki….and Bob.

 

LoveAlways,

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