No Room For Guilt in My Buddhism (#14)

Here's a journal entry from a Sunday night a few weeks ago:

Today was the first Sunday in months that I decided to not get up early and go to the temple for Puja [Devotional Ceremony]. I really wanted to sleep in and stay home and practice by myself in my own space.  I'm noticing this huge catholic guilt hanging over me for only going to the temple once this week. I really like to go 4 times. I'm not sure what to do with these feelings, so I'm writing them down. 

A few week's later, when Aj and I had our getaway in Mystic Hot Springs, I missed another puja. It happened to be on a day that a Tibetan Rinpoche came to town and gave an impromptu teaching for a practice that I've only received small pieces of. I was thrilled to hear stories and see videos and pictures of the experience from my sangha friends the next day. Just like I was thrilled to tell them and show them what I was up to with my love. Both experiences felt important and enlightening to a person's soul. My karma led me to be in a different paradise during that time. I felt grounded in that.

So then we sat down to practice.
And the guilt began to hang low in my belly.
I could not focus.
I could not connect with the dieties.
My mind raced for the entire ninety minutes.
For the first time in this gonpa.
My knees ached.
I felt frustrated.

That next Sunday I awoke at 8:30 and really didn't feel like going to practice. But I had been trying this thing where I don't make excuses for shit. So I honored that and got up and got dressed and got Aj out of bed to come with me.

This practice was the hardest. The straw that broke me.
 It's a quick hour with mostly english text. 
It was a compassion practice. Beginner stuff. 
As soon as we began prayers I could not seem to hold back my tears. Everything felt wrong. I didn't know why I was there. I felt like I was there just to be there because I felt bad when I wasn't there. I couldn't sing the verses. I wanted to be done. I felt jolted back into Catholic mass, feeling full of question and doubt. 

Afterwards, as soon as we got in the car Aj looked at me and asked me what was wrong. I burst into tears. A most heightened existential crisis ensued. I felt like my soul was floating out into empty space. Like there was nothing anchoring it to anything. Like I had lost connection with the refuge tree. Like I'm not a good enough practitioner. Like I'm just a young dumb westerner. Like I don't even know if Jane even exists in space and time because she's floating away into into the empty space of non-belonging, held back by my own existence.
It was a crisis. And it had been clearly building up. 

I released as much emotion as possible in that moment. It was time.

While the feelings were real, the facts were all in my head. Delusions. Obscurations. The things I pray to be purified of. The "facts" that bring lower vibrations into my life.

My conclusion was that it was time to take a mindful break from practicing at the Gonpa. I talked it through with one of my sangha sisters. She helped me to feel okay with spending some time practicing alone, practicing self-care, and soothing my emotions. "Working with the dharma is like that" she said to me, "I would rather see your smiling face with Aja then see your sad face at puja. You are putting too much pressure on yourself to be the perfect practitioner." I felt comforted by her maternal advice to care for oneself. Compassion for oneself is at the root of my beginner practices, and I had lost that somewhere along the way. I knew that I needed to follow the instinctual direction coming from within. 

Since that decision, I've experienced some deeply cleansing practices on my own every day in my own altar space. In the early morning when the sun is just rising in my window, the fountains outside my door are bubbling, the LDS temple church bells chime. It is quiet and still in the morning. I'm wrapped in blankets. The dieties are back in my meditations, offering me blessings of light. I offer them candles, incense and beautiful gemstones. I feel connected with them again. 

I can return to my first intention of doing this practice: To benefit others.

My vow was to practice for the benefit of all sentient beings.

But if I am not listening to myself and my inner needs, how can I be of benefit to others?
On the same coin: If I feel guilty while I'm practicing, what kind of energy am I projecting into the world? There is no room for guilt in my Buddhism. Stay away from that. Follow that inner direction. With each practice I've felt the freedom to purify self-doubts and just SIT and enjoy the silence of meditation and SIT in the LIGHT of the Buddha.

I have found that solitude can be a great healer for a loudly critical voice in your head.
Retreat is important. Time in solitude is cleansing.

When I took refuge, I took on responsibilities for thousand year old practices, traditions and expectations. I was adopted into a spiritual family. I've been trying to figure out how to be a young modern working girl who also happens to be very committed to practicing and studying specific eastern religious tradition. Sometimes I feel like the fact that I am a Westerner will forever hold me back from fully realizing my own practice. But that would have to mean that I am me. That my ego exists. When it does not. I am simply consciousness. I'm not perfect and I don't know much. I just want to feel pure in my practice. Ya dig?

Sometimes I feel kind of lonery (not lonely, lonery) in my Buddhist world being the youngest member of my sangha. I didn't know any one else who did this before I first set foot in the Gonpa. I just knew it was my path. I walked in there and found a home. I was given a family, some of which come and go. It's an auspicious place to be. It is my Himalayan getaway in the middle of my city. It is my oasis from the jungle. But I know only a handful of people who know what it's like to be in this position. Definitely haven't come across any other 20-something year olds practicing Tibetan Buddhism. If you're out there, please hit me up!

I shall continue to be more and more straightforward about what my spiritual path is like, as I've expressed here and here. I hope to never paint a false picture of myself, because I'm really quite ordinary. I want to be pure and concise about my motives, which are simply to share in my journey, my philosophy and the dharma. As an obsessive creative, I indulge in every outlet that I can find. But even the paragraphs above, I feel like I've overshared. Like I shouldn't be so open booked about my religious feelings and experiences. Like that's private stuff. 

Well, vulnerability breeds connectedness. SO there. 

I recently had a loved one tell me that the Dalai Lama would call bullshit on me and who I am. And to that I say, His Holiness, the first lesson you ever taught me was to be more honest. To open your heart. To show the world your true self, and in that, help others reveal their true selves. Which ultimately (or relatively?) leads to revealing the enlightened nature inside all of us.

So I'm gonna keep doing my motherfucking thing. I know you've got my back HHDL. <3

At Yogananda Paramahansa's Ashram in San Diego, Cali.