practicing acceptance

i awake at midnight and, boom, an opportunity to practice acceptance walks through the bedroom door. here's what happens. hwubby says, let's go to hong kong for chinese new year. fast forward we clear out the window according to the dates that hwubby found out. from where? probably he googled. it turns out that it is a window between his work commitments. so we book the flights, arrange accommodations, announce to family and friends. meanwhile thoughts after thoughts come up regarding how to plan the trip given it is chinese new year. most importantly i am happy that we will celebrate my aunt ellen's birthday which is on the seventh day of chinese new year. this is the one who has been watching over and looking after my mother tirelessly and selflessly. honest to god i could not have been a better daughter than she is. countless medical appointments, midnight emergencies. so i'm really glad that we have this wonderful occasion to honor her.

so there he is. hwubby bursts through the bedroom door and says, it's not chinese new year. i am jolted awake. i say, what? he says, i was talking to this woman from an international school in hong kong, she wants to see me, so we are working on the date, and i say, we are coming in chinese new year, when is the school holiday over? she says, no, it's not chinese new year. i say, how can that be? she emails me later and says our dates are for last year's chinese new year.

i couldn't fall back to sleep. the mind spins around and races in all directions. i knew something was not right. aunt ellen didn't sound that excited when i told her the dates. i should have followed that tiny inner hum. blah blah blah.

finally, in this morning's meditation, as i work hard to keep coming back to the sound and movement of the natural and easy breath i feel a sense of 'it is what it is.' not passive resentment. just being in the circumstance with all the specifics in the present moment. so hwubby makes a mistake. and he apologizes. i accept it. we move on. none of it takes away what his inner self is already is. i come out of meditation with a clearer and quieter mind. the tendency to resisting what is is further weakened. my ability to stay in the present moment is strengthened a little bit more. what a great thing it turns out to be.

eating and cooking are her meditations

i haven't started transcribing the session with my editor yet because i want to look at it from an open space of quiet, stillness and brightness. or else i'll be looking at the situation through the lens of i'll get lost, i can't hold it all. so, in the last several days, every meditation reveals, or shall i say illumine, one thing my editor says. today is this. suk wah, you write about food so beautifully, can you put it to a bigger use?

as i chew on this nugget i begin to see that this is where craftsmanship comes in. i really thought i had, through painting pictures of the heroine's relationship with food, that food is her spiritual path, eating and cooking are her spiritual practices. as my writing coach...and that happens to be hwubby...says, she is always hungry. hungry is a spot on descriptive for this character. she is consumed by hunger. the way she was raised and conditioned she understood this hunger as insatiable desires for food. it's how she soothes herself and calms the racing mind. so i thought i didn't have to spell it out in so many words to say that eating and cooking are her communions, her meditations. i say, i don't want to be preachy. editor says, you can do it in a sentence, even a phrase, very light-handed, but you must do it or else you lose the reader, nobody can endure pages after pages of eating lox and bagels and have no idea where you are going with it.

i see. i have to connect dots and i have to reduce.

can i hold both in awareness?

my editor says, suk wah, you write so beautifully, i've never seen anyone writing about food as beautiful as you do, the metaphors, the way you write about it, are just...i can't write better than you do. sometimes a writer says to me, i write this way because it's my 'voice.' i would say, you don't have a 'voice.' anyway, my editor goes on to say, you write best when you just write, paragraph after paragraph, but you can't write forty pages of 'eating lox and bagels.' i really can't bring myself to say, one of the reasons i end up having forty pages of 'eating lox and bagels' is this. marquez writes eighty pages about a couple moving around each other in the night. well, all i can say is it is not working out for me. not yet. marquez is marquez. suk wah is suk wah. i have to deal with suk wah's reality as it is. don't compare, suk wah.

so, what's the point i am trying to get at? let me see. o yes. this morning, in meditation, it comes to me that i get lost, in a good way, when i just write and write. but then i lose the narrative, pacing, rhythm. i am very good at writing scenes, dialogues. i love it. i get so much joy doing it. but i want to get the book done in a proper way. so i have to be able to hold the scene and the story together in my awareness while dialogues and details are flowing out from the inner self. my editor says, can your mind work that way? right now, i don't know. not yet.

the shamus within. happy chanukkah

the sixth night of chanukkah is approaching. i am coming to appreciate the timeless wisdom in this practice of lighting yet another candle as the days go on. flame by flame, day by day, i gather the sense of building a brighter light and with that ever growing faith and trust in my own flame within. on the fourth night i was by myself. i turn off all other external light source after i kindled the shamus, the center light. i see the darkness around me diminish rapidly with another candle lit. when all are burning bright i experience one light. there is no difference between the brightness within and that without. the practice of lighting the candles helps me see the inner light, the flame which is sustained by none other than my supreme inner self. the shamus within is always there to offer protection from darkness.

happy chanukkah to all. may we be the light. may the light be us.

feeling daunted.

this morning's meditation is sweetness tossed in with spurts of feeling daunted. not heavy spurts. light spurts. i know exactly how it is triggered. from the session with my editor yesterday. we are now dealing with structural issues. roles and purposes of characters, goal of a scene, what need to go into which third of the book...all that good stuff. yet, as she says, you write so beautifully and you are at your best when you just write and write, so we don't want to make you write like you are doing a job, have to follow a checklist of things to put in.

i really don't know how to resolve this right now. i guess i'll just do the only thing i know how. let the feeling be there, and ask, you are a flash of supreme consciousness, what are you showing me? quickly a couple of things come up. inadequacy. smallness. unworthiness. okay, enough for now. and really, they are all variants of forgetting that i hold within me the source of that which creates the entire physical universe that ever existed, is existing and will exist. obviously this truth is still something in the head and mind, not in the heart and blood. what ought i do? please show me, my innermost and highest self.

i become one with the soup

i meditate two hours. so satisfying. so relaxing. it never ceases to amaze me. really. i just sit quietly, keep paying attention to the way the breath is coming in and going out of me. i am not doing anything really. after a little bit there is just this sound of waves massaging the body, mind and i lose the sense of what is within and what is without. i feel boundlessly expansive. i feel abundant beyond measure.  simply sublime.

occasionally i see this thought and that emotion appear. none of them bother me. and then a gentle and sweet reminder comes up. you haven't tried the thai turkey soup yet. o, yes. i refreshed the soup yesterday with the last and big piece of carcass, threw in more carrot, turnip, potato. i was so absorbed in it that i completely forgot about the thom yum. somewhere around this point i realize i am caught up in a thought wave. one thought pulls out another, and another. i summon the spiritual force to bring attention back to the breath wave and choose to ground my understanding in this. it doesn't matter what the content of the thought, or whatever mental activity, is. that's irrelevant. any mental activity is a temporary flash of pure consciousness, which is my essential nature, reflected on the screen of mind. i experience satisfaction and joy not because of the thoughts. as a matter of fact such satisfaction and joy are not derived from the food, or anything outside of me. they are what i am. they add the taste of oneness to whatever i eat. indeed i can safely say i become one with the soup. it is complete and perfect as it is.

i am still going to try it with some thom yum though.

reborn turkey soup with thai touch

hwubby walks in the door from the dark cold outside. he says, it smells beautiful. i ladle out a bowl of steaming turkey carcass soup. he says, this smells like a dream, looks like a dream and you are a beautiful dream. i gotta say this turkey soup is a beautiful dream all right. cubes of carrots, turnip and potato float. i layer the bowl bottom with slices of the bright white, juicy breast meat that i carved out earlier. the aroma is intoxicating with notes of celery, pepper, onion, garlic, ginger, sage. it's so good that i have three big bowls and that's my supper.

today i'm going to take it up another notch. how? listen to this. i come downstairs after meditation to make my chai and what do i see? an almost empty jar that has a little bit of thom yum paste. this is the interesting part. it's been loitering on the counter for a while. i mean to but somehow i never get around to make a thom yum. in this moment i know why. today i'll spoon a little bit into the soup, not to make a thai soup out of it but just to heighten it with some spunk. now that's a truly inspired inner message:) hwubby says, we'll have old soup today? i say, no, the turkey is too huge for the pot so i had to leave a big piece out. therefore today's soup is not leftover but reborn. this is really something fun to look forward to.

what fabulous cousins and nephew and niece i have. i am truly lucked out. thank you tommy, daisy, byron and agnes.