Turtle Shells Are Forgiveness

Do you know where happiness comes from?  How do you know when you’re feeling it?  Where do you feel it?  Think back to a moment in time when you had no doubt you were happy.  For me that was when my father was alive and well.  Those were the days that my brother and I were just small children.  And my only concern was how to cure boredom.

I was recently taking a class on Metta where my Teacher asked us to try and think of such a moment.  I struggled for weeks to no avail.  Then during one profound moment, I felt something.  But it did not have a glimmer of joyfulness in it!  No.  Instead, I felt like I had been swallowed up by a mountain of grief that I could not escape.  Then, as if that were not enough.  I got hit with violent waves of angry tsunamis that still have not subsided to this day.  It is the reason I still keep hitting bottom, and the very reason why I’ve been having difficulty sitting on the cushion.  Let alone observe Uposatha.

Metta is a practice that allows us to feel happiness and joy within the body.  In a place we call the heart center.  But my heart has been dead for almost 20 years.  I killed it before my father died as a dysfunctional coping mechanism.  Now I will need to slowly revive it through concentration practice before I am to feel any profound levels of happiness again.  I need to grieve, heal, and learn to sit with all these bottled up emotions.  I’d even reach out to a therapist if I had insurance.  (But that is another story all together.)

I am afraid to be human, afraid to feel.  I am afraid of being vulnerable.  This may be hard to believe considering that I am an artist and a fairly good performer that has no problem on a stage.  But those are feelings that don’t deal with my fundamental fears of life, death and machismo.  To get over this rut I will need to build up the courage slowly, forgive myself, and my father for being human.  Like my Teacher often says “it is the turtle that wins this race not the hare.”