Holy hissy-fits, Batman, have I been navigating the sacred darkness this week!
Last Friday morning I realized I was not able to log onto the SCS website. I @$$sumed our website was just down for some reason so I sent a text message to Joel and to our webmaster, Rebecca. Rebecca responded that she was able to log in just fine.
There-in-lies-the-problem….
Everyone can log in except me. And I can log in everywhere except on my home WiFi. I can even log on from home connecting to an unsecure xfinitywifi hot spot.
Hours of calls.
Many words of frustration.
If I had to give the same information to one more person, I was going to jump out of my skin.
I know I was not being kind to them. I was also not being kind to ME.
As I hung up the phone, still awaiting a resolution, an email message popped in from Barbara Brodsky, about the Dharma Path homework for this two weeks:
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“I’m challenging all of you, as well. Where are you spinning in circles? Why? Here is the sacred darkness, but you can’t take it as sacred because there’s so much fear of it. You have to stop, as I was forced to stop in that snow cave of the avalanche. Trapped, knowing, yes, I still could die here. Who knows what will happen. I had tools to survive, but that was no guarantee of survival. More important, I could not help the people that I was pledged to help, at least not at that point. I had to just stop and survive in the cave. Dig and meditate, and dig and meditate, and dig and meditate, until I could overcome the old habits of fear; of trying to push the stone up the hill and make it stay there. To realize, to remember it’s all impermanent. Take it one step at a time, with an open heart. See where you are. See what the next step might be. Do it with love. And if it’s not effective, stop and meditate again, and see what a different step might be.”
I wrote back to Barbara: “Do you think the 8 hours I have spent on the phone with Comcast trying to get an issue with my domain cleared counts????”
Barbara wrote back to me: “Aaron is smiling and asks, ‘What did you learn?'”
This morning I wrote in my journal about an email exchange I had with Roann (one of my Dharma Sisters) following our Zoom gathering at which I shared my frustration and cried.
I was very tired and feeling sad last night when I attended my online two-year intensive. One of the women wrote to me afterwards. “Where do you allow for protection of yourself, where you’re not a ‘doormat’ for everyone else’s tsuris (trouble or woes)? Or maybe you want to be in that position and play that role. If you weren’t available to everyone and their mothers uncle… Who would you be? If you didn’t put on the apron in the kitchen, what would happen?”
I wrote back in my journal:
D: You know my heart. I put on the apron in the kitchen because it is a joy to serve. Like rinsing out the coffee pot for Pat on retreat. Easy to do. The state of darkness is not about that. What am I feeling?
V: You are appropriately feeling grief. Yes, you are also knowing your helplessness but you are aware nothing you are going through is permanent. The unkindness (being hostile, rude, short-tempered) doesn’t bother you because you are in an “I shouldn’t be feeling this” mode. You know who you are and the unkindness bothers you because it feels awful. Some people have no baseline for feeling freedom and peace. You have that. Since Friday you have spent many hours on the phone with Comcast without access to this natural state of openness. That causes grief.
I have just spent another hour on the phone. This time with a woman who works security at the back end for the company that hosts our website.
I dialed Comcast again. I am going to take it one step at a time, with an open heart.
Aaron says, “See where you are. See what the next step might be. Do it with love. And if it’s not effective, stop and meditate again, and see what a different step might be.”
Welcoming prayers and energy holding….
P.S. In case you are wondering, I also spent time on a text chat with Comcast, and they offered me a $5 credit off my bill because I have been inconvenienced. Then I called the number the text chat gave me and was told an open ticket is already in process, so I just need to wait until they resolve the issue and someone will call me. Now I am at the office using the WiFi there to post this.
