Thank you Aparnaji for leading the contemplation class for us and everyone for your beautiful shares. It seemed too close to the end of the class for me to chime in when ‘remembering’ came up but I wanted to share something I’ve noticed and am wondering if others have too, that ‘forgetting’ is becoming more and more uncomfortable, painful even-it becomes barren so quickly, and I’m wondering if it’s like a built in mechanism of sorts, a natural motivation to be more diligent about NOT forgetting. It seems I can’t stray far or for long now without feeling the angst of separation and wanting, yearning to be back. It reminds me of the expression to be ‘on the straight and narrow’ and it seems to be getting straighter and narrower. I always feel such relief and gratitude when I have ‘strayed’ or forgotten, inevitably because my ego or mind has gotten carried away, to come back to mySelf-relief to feel that wholeness and deep gratitude that it is unchanging and always there for us.
Jai Maa
My recent experience of particularly painful straying came courtesy of repulsion rather than attraction, when I felt obligated to help entertain for a small family Super Bowl gathering at my home. The whole football-focused gestalt felt toxic and I went into a transient but deep depression just contemplating "having to" sit through the whole game. I adjusted my boundaries and came up with a compromise that, at best, just got me through it. No sooner it was over then the depression lifted and I naturally drifted back into a sacred space that had seemed light years away if real at all. Next time something similar happens I need to be better at using sadhanas to stay in sacred space within, despite others' hyperfocus on something without that registers in me (speaking for myself) as an especially toxic form of samsara.