After my talk with Sifu, I am dialing things back with my business and my practice and starting at week 1. I think things will go much smoother if I wait until I actually have closed down my studio, but I decided to go ahead and start now. I've been keeping a separate notebook from the one I normally use to scribble down notes--mainly the 13 points. I want to have them memorized, and the only way I know how is to do the same thing I did in bootcamp with the 11 general orders of a sentry-- I would copy them before bed until I reached the point when I could write them from memory.
Back when Sumiko was here, in January, we were invited by the guy who runs the coffee shop near my studio to attend a church service with him. As far as PR goes, she thought it would be a great idea. Unfortunately, we were late meeting Chuck, so we did not go to the church service with him, but the whole idea of attending a church service with Sumiko was a big deal for me. Ever since I left Seminary, I am actually not comfortable attending church, but I didn't feel any anxiety about the entire ordeal knowing that she would be there.
So I sent her a note on Facebook asking if she would attend a Buddhist service with me the next time she is in town for a visit. She said that it's one of those things that would be better if I do on my own. Not sure if that was her nice way of saying no, or if she really meant that I should experience it on my own. I've gone to the Zen center in South Nashville and really enjoy that--but I've never gone to the Theravadan monastery off Murfreesboro Road or the Tibetan Buddhist places. Actually we have a large Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian population here, but I have never thought about going to a service where they might frequent--I sort of imagined that the services might not be in English.
So what that whole thing has to do with where I am going with this post is that I started telling her how I need to get back to meditating. The last time I really started to realize that I needed to get back to my practice, I was dealing with some issues at the time. Of course the meditation was making me have to really face those issues, and well...I backed off.
I'm going to make it a point to get in 20 minutes of sitting every night before bed. Tonight...well... "Hello Monkey Mind!" My thoughts were all over the place. This is just day 1, so maybe after 30...60...90...180 days? Maybe I will feel better...and my brain chatter will have calmed down considerably.
We'll see!