How Transcendental Meditation Has Rewired Who I Am.

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Problems will disappear as darkness disappears with the onset of light. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

We discover we’ve found what we’re looking for in life when it falls on us from the sky. This is how TM has been, but I didn’t know how much TM had changed me until recently.

I’ve always dealt with challenges badly.

Things which didn’t go the way I wanted them to, or when something happened which wasn’t in my control, these things always made me lash out at whomever I believed was responsible.

A lot of the times it has been my wife. This happened not because of her, but because I wasn’t in control. I’ve never hit her, but words are worse than fists, as I know from my childhood.

We’ve had a storage unit for a long time, longer than we wanted, but that’s what happens when you have kids, get older and don’t want to throw stuff away.

We kept our Christmas stuff, childhood toys and a few other things in there, but we’d always paid it…

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through our banks statements and noticed the money for the unit hadn’t come out in a while.

My wife checked on it, and it hadn’t been paid in a long time.

My wife called me at work, needing to talk to me about it.

Never have I felt like TM had changed me so much as when I talked to her on the phone that night.

She explained what happened, my response, “It’s just stuff, we can replace stuff. Are you okay?”

Before TM, I would have yelled screamed and might not have come home.

We’ve talked about it since and we both agree, I would never have been as calm without TM.

All of the things we collect in life are just stuff. There’s nothing more important than the people sharing your life.

Remember when you get angry to take a step back and think, “How will this effect our relationship?”

When you look at who you are; are you happy with how you act towards others? Do you find joy when you’re discussing your life with others? And most important, Are you happy with who you are?

Five months ago I would say no to each of those. Today, I find more peace in talking to people, but nothing gets me upset, not like before TM.

I’ve found my happy place. I’ve discovered where I’m supposed to be and what I should be doing with my life.

TM has rewired who I am, and I no longer worry about my temper, because it’s no longer there.

When Your Feeling the Writing Flow…Or How I Spent My Tuesday

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It was empty when I walked in, the freshly polished floor shone in the early light. The smell of coffee and cinnamon rolls rolled through the mall in waves of ecstasy.
My footsteps echoed though I only wore Vans.
The mall was my savior.
I people watched, wrote new chapters of my new project and took notes on what I saw.
When you’re in the mall there are things you don’t see, unless you’re there wasting time for five or six hours, as I did on Tuesday.
There’s something different about being there with only the security guards, the mall walkers doing their laps, a laptop and a Moleskine.
There’s a different feeling to it when the stores are preparing to open on a Tuesday. There’s no anticipation of it being busy. The shop keepers seem to understand, “Today is a get your hours and go home day.”
Sitting in the Starbucks, a pool of wetness at the base of my Venti iced latte, I started to write.
It wasn’t like the other times, it didn’t sputter, it wasn’t clogged with traffic or nonsense.
It was the beginning of The Flow.
There were glimmers it might happen, the morning TM was amazing, breakfast tasted better, but I couldn’t believe that I would write with such energy.
The first few sentences weren’t remarkable, but they were sentences with structure, flavor and they flowed.
With each description, each piece of the story I didn’t notice my latte was creating an lake in the middle of the table, nor did I notice the two people watching me write, who incidentally saw me look up at them and turned away.
I wasn’t sure how long I was writing, maybe thirty minutes, possibly forty, but they moved together as fast as my fingers across the keyboard.
It’s an incredible feeling to make the scene the way your mind sees it. To create the atmosphere the way your bones feel it and to feel the flow of the words without noticing how much time had gone by.
When the flow comes, the writing moves without effort.
It’s the Zone, the box or your own little world.
It moves and you don’t see how fast the words come until you’re staring at your words, look at the clock and see it’s been forty minutes since you looked up.
That’s the best type of writing.
Feeling the flow.

When you Find the Strength to Continue…

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Strength, physical or mental has always been something I’ve dealt with.

When I was in ninth grade I weighed 75 lbs, and worried every day about being bullied. There were days I’d want to give up, and though most don’t know it I use to scratch myself, it’s called cutting now, but I never did it very deep, it was always a way for me to control something.

I couldn’t gain weight, much to me dad’s dismay. I didn’t do well in school and there were many times I’d wish the world would go away. Most of those times I’d sit in my room with a small knife and rub it against my arm, sometimes I’d bleed, others not, but it’s been a long time since I last cut, and I’m finally happy with where my life is.

We reach the darkest places in our lives when we no one is listening, watching or otherwise paying attention.

No one knew I cut, I’m sure my parents had no idea, probably still don’t.

I got through the hardest parts of my childhood by keeping things inside. I’d never tell anyone what was really wrong. I feared they’d throw me in the white padded room wearing a hug-me jacket.

The things I kept inside were the hate I had for myself and the guilt I felt for things in my life. I knew I wasn’t a great person at the time, I knew that cutting was wrong, but I didn’t care, it gave me comfort when I felt there was none.

The truth was, I felt that if my parents had stayed married, I would have been a different person.

When they divorced I was outgoing and liked who I was, I was eight, but still. I knew these things then.

Afterwards, not so much. I hated my life and wished I was anything but who I was. That went on for a long time, longer than I thought, especially as I’ve been rather reflective of my teenage years lately I’ve found that life isn’t fair, for anyone.

We live, die and move on, but in the middle of it all we have to find time to live, truly live. If we don’t live the life we want, why are we trying so hard to live?

Each year since my parents divorced I hated the start of the school year, except when I became a dad. I’ve learned when the kids go back to school it’s not about me, it’s about them, and they’ll always matter more than I do.

As my kids have grown I’ve discovered my parents did right by me for getting divorced. I know it was the only option they had at the moment and now that I’ve been married nearly 15 years, I know how hard it is to keep things going, and they’d just had enough.

I don’t blame them, fault them or have any bad feelings about coming from divorced parents. I’m proud they discovered they weren’t compatible anymore and decided it was for the best they not live in the same house.

Now I’m five months into TM and I can reflect on who I was for most of my life, I’m not happy with how I treated others, but most of all I’m not happy with how I treated myself. I’ve learned my life is under my control and any mistakes are my own and it’s time to own up for things I’ve done.

To all those I’ve wronged in one way or another, I’m sorry.

To be in control of oneself is a different feeling, and it’s something I plan to keep doing. Transcendental Meditation has been the greatest blessing I’ve ever been given and will continue for the rest of my life, I just want others to discover it and finally be comfortable with themselves.

Bri

How Living in Wyoming Made Me a Better Writer

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The year I graduated from high school, we lived in a small trailer on the plains of Wyoming.

It was beautiful to me.

Snow drifts grew to be as large as a truck. The days blended together as the grey, overcast clouds blocked out the sun. We hid in our rooms, or the living room, a dull orange light from the lamp or the white glow of the television casting its glow upon our faces.

It was these nights, with my sister, mom and dad huddled on a couch or under a blanket, which reminded me life wasn’t as bad as my teenage mind thought it was.

Each day, my sister and I would wake from our sleep, hurry to the bathroom, for if we didn’t there would be no hot water, or worse yet, not water at all.

We’d dress in adjacent rooms, only a panel separating our rooms.

It was there on those mornings, when we stood for the bus in 20 below weather I thought not of living somewhere warm, but thought of how beautiful the snow looked, the shape of the ice on the road as it jutted from the black top.

You see, in Wyoming, when there is slush in the road, it freezes like the world turned upside down. There were mornings when I was worried we’d hit one of these icicles and the bus would stop on the freeway leading to the nearest town where we attended school.

Life was easy on that plane in Wyoming. I had school, different girlfriends, and I’d stay up late writing.

Those were the days of teenage angst ridden poems about love, pain and the things which I’ve now outgrown, but the things I wrote were the beginnings of who I’d become years later, 20 years later.

Now that I’ve been away from snow drifts, the world turned upside down and the long bus rides, I think about why I wrote, not what I wrote. I remember thinking, no one will ever see this.

I loved that I could write something I thought was beautiful, and not care if the world saw it or not.

I liked the feeling of writing that way, it’s something I’ve tried to do again, but my mind fails me at those moments.

I think snow drifts and a trip down the rabbit hole will help, but I’ve been in the darkest places, and prefer the light, it keeps the dark away.

I saw life through my 18-year-old eyes a few days ago as I sifted through journals of poems and stories.

I liked what I read, the carelessness of the writing, the sense that the writer knew no one would see it, least of all himself in 20 years.

I’m going to return to writing without caring, because I was happiest when I stood in 20 below weather, my life in front of me and the discovery of what comes next.

What do we do when our life gets out of control?

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For most people, stress is an everyday occurrence and they just live with it, deal with, or put it out of their mind until they’re laying in hospital bed.

Almost a year ago I was stricken with Shingles. I thought it was something older people got, but I was wrong. Shingles can attack anyone who’s had chicken pox.

Having Shingles was especially unnerving since my parents had said I’d never had chicken pox, well I obviously had and band of scabs stretched across my clavicle, spread up my neck onto my head and right ear.

I missed a few days of work, luckily I noticed it early and started treatment.

After my recovery I began to think about how I became so stressed that a virus ravaged my body.

I discovered there was a perfect storm around me.

  1. My grandfather died.
  2. My dad ignored me at my grandfather’s funeral.
  3. I became depressed enough that I wanted to take my own life.
  4. My fiction writing became stagnant.

It was months later, after someone I worked with confronted me and said, “I don’t care about your problems”, which sent me over the edge. I talked about this in a previous post.

The death of my grandfather was something I knew was coming, but having little contact with my dad’s side of the family, I was unaware of how bad he was.

My dad’s snubbing me at the service was something I didn’t think would happen, This comes mostly because it was his father’s service and I thought he’d need the emotional support, I was wrong.

The depression which set in after leaving my grandfather’s service hit me a month later when the first sign of Shingles appeared.

My writing had always been my escape from depression, even as a kid I’d create stories in my head, never writing them down.

Writing has helped me discover who I am as much as TM has, possibly more since it’s been in my life longer.

As a teenager, writing helped me find who I was, and even though I wasn’t quite sure who I was, writing always helped.

When I wasn’t able to write, my depression became worse; which led to more stress, eventually leading to Shingles.

I’d never experienced sickness like Shingles before. Sure, I’ve been suffering from migraines since 2004, but I’d never had something knock me on my ass like Shingles. It made me begin to reevaluate my life.

The catalyst to getting over my depression, the stress I’d suffered from my grandfather’s death was a mental break.

The break made me realize I wasn’t healthy, mentally, physically or spiritually.

When I broke, I knew something had to change. That was the middle of March, just after my 38th birthday.

The one thing I thought of when I broke was this, “Every one will be better without me.”

I believed this, not because I was selfish, but because I believed I was doing something good for those around me.

When you’re depressed enough to want to take your life, you completely believe if you weren’t there, every one would be better.

This thought is not selfish, it’s a belief that life for you is better without them, it’s not about getting away from life, it’s about you being better because they’re not there to cause problems for you. This one thing is a misconception about suicide.

I’ve been to the edge with a knife, and I know what it looks like to stare at the blade and resist the urge to “make things better for those around you”.

Depression nearly took me, but it was my desire to see how this story ends which has kept me going.

When it was at its worst, I found something to help me get better.

Life takes us places we never thought we’d go. Sometimes we end up in a place where we need help.

Please ask for help if you need it!

Suicide Support Line