How Transcendental Meditation Helped Me Live in the Present Moment.

Posted on by
Reply

A soft flurry, like shredded tissue paper from God’s hands fell around me.

I watched the three of them play, one snowball, another.

Their laughter and smiles infectious as they struggled to stay upright on the damp grass.

I stood at the top of the hill, a smile from ear to ear as I watched my wife and kids play and I wondered, “how many of these moments have I missed?”

When I think about the selfish person I was a year ago (and I’m not referring to suicide). I wonder about the times days like the snowballs and laughter happened, but I was too busy worrying about myself?

I could have done more for my wife and kids, I see that now, but then, I couldn’t see anything but my own ambition and ego.

Ambition which had led me astray, ego which had nearly killed my marriage, but now that I’m better and see who I was, I think about moments, small moments that I may have missed because I wasn’t paying attention to the “moment’.

But what thing stands out among everything. The person I was missed some awesome things, things which I’ll never get back, but I’m trying.

I look at my children playing, my son tearing it up on video games, my daughter and her Palace Pets, and I broke a promise to them, one I’ve been working to repair.

For my wife, whose trust and love I often took for granted, I try to make new moments for us. Moments only we know about, whether it’s laughter about me acting out something that happened at work, or doing one of the numerous voices I’m able to do, I’ve begun to find myself in the ego I once held sacred.

I look for ways to make up for the person I was, whether that’s my son telling me about school, showing me the details of his new Lego collection, or my daughter explaining the intricacies of which Palace Pet belongs to which Disney Princess.

I listen more to them now. My wife, I truly hear her. I don’t judge her as I once did. I take notice of her more and that’s the one thing I’ve noticed about TM and who I am now, I find myself more in love with my wife than I believe I’ve ever been.

I see the way she fixes her hair to try to hide the grey and the way she looks at me as if I were an alien when I respond to a question in a way my former self wouldn’t have.

I see all these things about my family, and to think, I’m different because of 20 minutes twice a day. That’s all I’ve changed.

The Day I Almost Didn’t See.

Posted on by
1

We never think about when our loved ones leave us until it gets closer.

It was 5:37, the phone pierced the early morning silence. Her hands unsteady, my mind racing, I watched her reach for it.

I tried not to listen, but by that time he’d already become another father to me.

I lay there with her in the predawn light, pieces of sun pushing through the blinds, her head on my chest, the tears flowing, hers and mine.

I held her until she had to get up and clear her sinuses.

My chest moist from her tears, her hair damp from mine and as she returned to bed, I realized what we’d been through the last 16 years.

She’d watched two of my grandfathers pass and one grandmother. While I saw her grandmother and that morning her father, but through all of it I never had that moment of clarity which expressed itself that morning.

We’d seen the worst of each other. The worst of our parents and yet we still clung to each other that morning.

I see her today. Her face bright, her multicolored eyes shimmering and I think about a year ago when I nearly took my own life.

I see our kids, their beautiful faces and remember thinking, “they’ll be better.”

But the truth was, I believed it then.

Today I see the life I almost gave up and I hug her tighter because I almost wasn’t there to hold her, to embrace her and wipe the tears away.

The last 8 months has changed me. Transcendental Meditation has changed who I am and I never thought I could feel this happy, but I never believed I’d live this long.

How Transcendental Meditation is leading me to other discoveries.

Posted on by
Reply

When we least expect our life to improve, it does.

Now that I’ve been practicing Transcendental Meditation for 7 months, I see where I was when my mind broke. I see the life, the person and the lack of spirituality I had in my life.

I know that I’ve been Buddhist for over 10 years, but I never meditated every day until TM. It’s not because I didn’t want to, it was only because I didn’t see it affecting my life the way I thought it would.

I see others who’ve practiced Buddhism and they seem okay, but some of them who say they practice, aren’t exactly happy with the lives they live and it affects who they are, how they respond to criticism and whether they’re open to improving themselves.

When things came crashing down 7 months ago, I had no other options than to try something “radical”.

To me Transcendental Meditation seemed “radical”, it was something I’d looked into, but it wasn’t something I really believed would help me, because we never truly believe the benefits of something until we’ve tried it.

When I sat down with Michael, my teacher, I wasn’t sure what would happen, and maybe I wasn’t prepared for what happened.

While I sat and began my mantra, I felt a pull. It was full and yet it wasn’t alarming. It was the most calming thing that had ever happened to me.

As I descended into the pool of warmth I felt an absolute calm. There was nothing around me but calm water. While I sat at the bottom of the pool there was nothing but warmth and while it’s been 7 months since I began the intensity of the warmth and the strength of the calm, if you could call it that.

While I’ve dealt with many things the last seven months, including the death of my father-in-law, I’ve found that TM is the only thing which calms me enough, quiets my mind enough and centers my soul enough to continue with life.

The last few months I’ve been away from the blog to focus on non-blog related writing and though I had wanted to take a break from blogging, but there are many things I want to say about TM, about how I’ve benefited from it, how my family has and how my writing has.

Over the next few months I’ll be telling you these things. Some of them are drastic others, though seemingly minor, have changed who I am.

How Transcendental Meditation Helped Me Find What I Was Looking For.

Posted on by
Reply

We only find what we’ve been looking for when we’ve failed at everything else.

A little over a year ago I fell into a deep depression and contemplated suicide. My depression stemmed from a few different things, most of which were caused by external forces and my own head.

But the truth is things had been brewing for years.

It started with my biological dad and I having an argument, being kicked out of the house, arriving in Las Vegas with my big sister and having no idea what I was going to do with my life, which is a recurring theme.

My girlfriend moved down a month after I arrived in Las Vegas, we found an apartment soon after, bought a house and that’s when it started getting interesting!

I started getting migraines in 2004, just after the birth of my son. I went through test after test, to no avail. Doctors not finding anything medically wrong with me made me put off the fact that it was in my head, something I now regret not seeking help for.

When the economy tanked in 2007, along with many others, I lost our house. I say “I” because with the headaches and missed work because of them we were unable to live a life we once had and hence were unable to continue owning our house.

After the loss of our house, our daughter was born, 6 weeks early.

She lived in the N.I.C.U. unit at the hospital for the first month of her life and because she was sick and I was unable to do anything to help her get better, I felt like I had failed at being a father, something which I’ve felt often with my kids and even though my wife argues this point with me, I feel like I’ve failed them by not offering the life I felt the deserved.

I thought of leaving my wife and kids often at that point. I believed they’d be better off with someone who could take care of them in a way I couldn’t.

It was only after the death of my grandfather last year the true force of the depression took hold.

It started small, with an illness, shingles, and went throughout the winter. None of my family had an inkling of what was going on in my head.

Someone dealing with depression and thoughts of suicide will do anything to keep it from the people they care about.

My first thoughts of suicide happened toward the end of February. I planned things out. I knew my family would be better without me. The thought that I was killing myself to be rid of life, never occurred to me. The thought that “everyone will be better off without me” that happened multiple times throughout the day.

Toward the end of March I broke. The well that had been building inside me broke and I felt I either had get fixed or jump from a very tall parking structure, of which there are many in Las Vegas.

The break came after work. I called my wife sobbing, “I need to get help. I can’t do this anymore.”

I’d been looking into Transcendental Meditation earlier in the month and felt that I should try it, because I was out of options.

I went on the website, submitted my information and was contacted the next day via e-mail by my TM teacher Michael.

I called him, or he called me, I can’t remember which.

He was having a group come in the following Tuesday and I told him I’d be there.

I showed up to the meeting nervous, anxious and wondering about all the things that led me to try something I’d only read about in David Lynch’s book “Catching the Big Fish”.

I listened to Michael, watched a video of Maharishi and found myself truly listening.

By the end of the meeting I knew I wanted to do it.

I made an appointment for the next week, brought some flowers and few other things for the small ceremony, sat down, was given my mantra, began reciting it and plunged into a deep pool of consciousness.

At first I was unsure of what was happening, then Michael said, alright it’s been 20 minutes, stop repeating the mantra and begin coming up.

That was 6 months ago and there are many things which have changed in those months.

I still suffer from migraines, though they occur once a month, not the 3 or four a week I used to deal with.

I’ve discovered how wonderful my wife is all over again, how much I love her and how absolutely magical our love is.

I’ve seen people I work with ask me what’s wrong with me, what I’m taking and I’ve seen others become distant because of the new-found respect I have for myself.

There are those who will never understand me, they don’t need to. Throughout the last 6 months I’ve learned to be strong when dealing the adversity, to find out who I am and embrace him.

I’ve begun paying more attention to what is important to my kids and want to know what’s important to them, because the more I know about them the better father I can be.

Throughout all of the last 16 years there is only one person whose faith never wavered. She is my heart, soul and the reason I want to be a better man each day.

When I think of where I’ve been since I was kicked out that house. I’m a better man for not having him in my life, for learning to do things without his help and for my wife being by my side.

When I look at the places my mind has been, I see that everything led me to discover who I was, find my place and without my wife I wouldn’t be here.

 

This will be the last post of Delusions of Ink for the foreseeable future. I’ve enjoyed this blog very much, but it’s time to spend more of my writing time, writing books and doing the things I was too afraid to do before TM.

I leave you with this: If you’re struggling with depression, seek help. Talk to someone.

 

Why I Rethought The Way I Look at My Writing.

Posted on by
Reply

Each day we’re stuck living someone else’s dream.

We go to a job where oftentimes, we’re creating something for someone else, because it pays the bills.

What if we decided to live our dream, pay the bills and still keep people happy?

This was something I thought about the other day when I was writing.

I work a day job, which I had considered my main job, obviously neglecting my writing and anything creative in the process.

That was until this past week, when I was struck with something, I’m not a writer. I’m pretending to be a writer.

What I realized in that “moment of clarity” is that I’ve been looking at my writing as a second job, sure it doesn’t pay the bills right now, but as long as I treat my writing as the second job and not the first, it will always suffer.

In this realization I thought, “Damn, if I think this way, others do as well.”

What do we do about it?

We rethink our creative side, redo the way we look at our day and come up with ways to put our creative efforts first, and other things second.

I say this as a husband and father, “If your creative side isn’t in first place, it will never win.”

I have obligations, it’s not like I’m going to quit my day job, not right now. I see the time coming when that will happen, but it’s not right now.

The thing is, we all have things we want to do, but we put them in second place out of fear, shame or other reasons.

Fear of rejection, fear of someone not understanding and the fear of failure. And shame, damn, shame is the worst. When we look at the things we’ve failed at there could be a big list, and because we failed at those the shame and fear of it happening again makes us not want to try, not want to do it again.

But, when we come to the realization, as I did, that what we wake up for in the morning should be first. That the thing we want to do most in our life should be first, then, and only then will we discover the will to do it.

I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be hard. There will be people who say you can’t do it, there will be that damn voice in your head and when the voice in your head talks, tell it to F off.

The only way you’re going to do what you want with your life is to put your creative pursuits first and anything else second.

We live someone else’s dream every day, isn’t it about time we live our dream?