Spring of Presence - Betty's Room

Greetings from me!

Hello!

Something I suddenly felt this morning

is that when I cannot be present (simply being) in body and mind where I am right now,

I am always, without fail, comparing myself with something.

Though in truth we are already fulfilled right now,

comparing ourselves with the past can suddenly make us feel miserable,

or, looking toward the future, comparing now with the picture of the future we have drawn for ourselves

may be wearing away our sense of contentment.

For example, because something I bought at the supermarket last week was so delicious,

even if I go out of my way to buy it again today,

that magic does not work the same way.

Because this is now,

if I could see what now is showing me

as purely as possible,

without the obstacle of comparing it with before and after,

with the air flowing freely through,

perhaps we could always be wiser, and yet stay relaxed.

The Control Monster

The three of us siblings went to Okinawa.

To celebrate my brother retiring as an engineer in the United States,

the three of us (my sister, my brother, and I) visited Okinawa, where we were born and raised, together for the first time since scattering our mother's ashes more than 10 years ago.

We flew together from Tokyo,

and spending more than a week together in one hotel room, three beds lined up side by side,

was something we had not done in over 40 years.

We are siblings, yet for more than 40 years we have lived in separate places, with separate families, in separate ways.

Somewhere along the way we had gone from teenagers to grown-ups, and when we spent time together,

none of us functioned at all as the older sister, older brother, younger brother, or younger sister we had each pictured,

and everything unfolded completely differently from the trip we had imagined.

And

the sheer number of things that I

kept wishing of my sister and my brother, "I want you to be like this,"

was so overwhelming

that, honestly, I was completely worn out.

But when my mind short-circuited from all that exhaustion,

I was able to let go of my expectations without even trying,

and from there, things were easy.

In the Ho'oponopono I practice, we are told again and again

to clean a great deal on family bonds, relatives, ancestors, and kin,

and this was a trip of learning in which I felt the importance of that in my very bones.

Wanting them to be a certain way,

the weight of the memories I was carrying as I treated my family like dress-up dolls,

the self who had turned into a control monster,

and yet the kindness, compassion, and purity truly within,

all jumbled together—I think that is what is drawn inside the frame called "family."

I am exhausted,

but it is also true that gentleness toward myself has come back.

Because they are family,

I did not want them to be misunderstood by others.

When they were misunderstood and not treated kindly by others even though they are truly good people,

I used to make a big deal of it,

but I also realized that by trying to protect them,

I may have been taking away the very learning each of them was meant to gain.

So,

although I had arrogantly believed that I had a sense of safety and calm within me,

"Ah, there is still plenty of fear, firmly here within me"—

it was a truly precious trip that let me realize this.

Okinawa in particular

is where we lived when we were all still small,

so much of what the openness of childhood shows me

may still have appeared as raw, direct wounds, painful enough to hurt.

So this trip became one in which something I had almost forgotten—

my own self just as it is now, the self I had believed had grown strong—was washed bare.

Enjoy!

(2019/3/19)