30
GOING WITHIN AGAIN
Our mail compartment was crammed full when we arrived home. A letter from the Bibliotheque Nationale advising the last year Isidor Hershorn had lived in Montreal, 1952. Steve's pain from his gout was gone after being on the macro- biotic diet for two weeks!
We started our four-month regime, stuck to it religiously, cooking from morn- ing to night, with not only the preparation of our meals but healing drinks as well. It took two of us full-time. We lost a lot of weight, so much so that I called Michio Kushi to ask if this was normal. He said that being thin was the key to a long life. We continued to drive the 100 miles to Calgary every few weeks for our organic food and existed with healing first in our minds. It worked. We felt wonderful, Steve was pain-free and I had neither sweats nor stiff hands.
We became obsessive about our eating and when invited to friends, which wasn't often, we would appear at their door with our pot of freshly cooked organic brown rice. They understood. The advice to eat wider after the cleansing months, in other words, to incorporate more foods into our regime, fell on deaf ears. We didn't want anything to go wrong and didn't heed the warning.
"While the body has a roof over its head and is fully protected from all the inclemencies of the weather the mind is not protected from the storms of its own emotions. Its one desire is to fall asleep." 1
It had been a year when Elizabeth and I left Steve in Calgary once again for my second silent retreat. Many of the same people were back. When it came my turn to introduce myself, Shirley asked me "to tell the story behind the stone.”
When she and her husband visited my exhibit at the Devonian Gardens in Calgary, she fell in love with a sculpture called "Lotus of Loving Kindness," a meditative woman walking with a lotus flower as her heart in white alabaster. She had talked about it so frequently to her students, they decided to purchase it and present it to her at their last get-together of the year.
In 1974 I had ordered that particular piece of Italian alabaster from New York City. We dragged it across the country to Wyoming, where I did some preliminary work but couldn't decide what I wanted. When our log cabin burned, we hauled it to Canada and placed it under our porch. After being chosen for the one-woman show, I dug it up along with some earth, stones and ice, and was finally able to lug it into the cabin. It took two days to thaw after which I set it on my table to study. As I chipped away, a woman in a billowing poncho emerged, inspired by the walking meditation at the retreat I had attended. It took another month of rasping, shaping and sanding until she could stand on her own, balanced in her stride. The polishing made her come alive and breathe for the first time.
One morning I walked in to the meditation room with swollen eyes from last night's tears. While I was in the kitchen doing chores, Elizabeth seemed short with me. I had asked Shirley for some wisdom so as not to be upset about her impatience. She said to discuss it with her and to label it with whatever feelings it brought up. "Rejecting, rejecting, rejecting." Shirley came over during chores and asked how things were going. I told her I was trying to work on myself. I was also thinking about having to leave the next day, feeling it was too soon. She said it might be a good idea to mention that to the group. I was trying desperately to stay in the present and be calm. But suffering was what it was all about. So I welcomed the turbulence to remind me that nothing was perfect. When Anne led the loving kindness meditation, tears spilled down my cheeks. They seemed stored somewhere, motivated to move at certain times - like when we were told to love and be kind to ourselves.
At the beginning of that last evening session, somebody opened the curtains across the room and I was sitting in the direct path of an ugly glaring light. I be- came itchy, couldn't sit still and after one of the ladies left, I did too. Shirley and Anne asked how I felt. I didn't know. Then offhandedly I mentioned that the or- angel light shining in the window of the meditation room annoyed me. It made me angry. So that's what it was. I blamed it on the itchiness. Had I known I was angry, I could have labeled it and maybe had other options. It then would have been more under my control. But I didn't want to be "angry" so I blamed my not being able to sit calmly on my itchiness. Misplaced anger. Why hadn't I simply closed the curtains or just moved my spot? Rather than asserting myself, I made myself crazy. I wondered how much I internalized rather than admitted. Will I always be afraid to express my feelings for fear of being given away again?
On the final day of the retreat Elizabeth joined our circle. We all got to tell our tales and then moved into the dining room for our last meal together. She presented me with a beautiful macrobiotic meal and dessert, which brought tears to my eyes.
We would work out our conflicting feelings at some time I was sure.