Where there's smoke (or Sometimes A Cigar?)

Allow me to present an emotional revelation in four (and a half) parts/four days.

Thursday: Groundwork

Last Thursday, I listened to Eckhart Tolle being interviewed on Speaking of Faith. Here's Tolle talking about his notion of the "pain body" (I got the text from the transcript of the program):

[H]ow can there be so much emotional pain when the situation that [a person is] in cannot actually justify that much emotional pain? ... there's something in everybody that is a remnant of past painful emotion. And these remnants of past painful emotion from pain that you suffered as a child, perhaps even pain that was passed on from previous generations.

Friday early evening: An Abstract

On Friday, I told B. that I found it very difficult to be present, to pay attention to the particular thing happening in the moment. Instead, I said, my mind would immediately jump from the present to an abstracted universal, of which the present was only an example, and an insignificant one, at that. Even that statement, I noticed right away, was an abstraction. I couldn't even tell him about a particular time when I went from the concrete to the abstract, since such a time would itself have been a concrete example.

Discerning principles in the particular is an important skill for attorneys and judges engaged in legal argumentation, but when you can't turn it off, it becomes an impediment to mindful living.

Friday late evening: All The Wrong Places

At the end of the evening, when B told me he did not want to date, I had an emotional response that was quite out of proportion to the event. I had fears, anxieties and judgments come up, such as the fear that this was just another example of a "failed" date that confirmed my essentially unlovable or undate-able nature.

Tolle suggests that we "become the space for the emotion", and cultivate an awareness of the pain body, which is the thing that causes these apparently disproportionate hurts.

Late that night, speaking with my brother, I was indeed able to talk about my pain body, its manifestations and possible sources. This included relating to him a rather unfortunate incident in my childhood when my father, out of a misguided attempt to shame me into losing weight (I shall assume it wasn't out of pure spite or intentional hurtfulness), told me that I was so fat that, if I were a girl, nobody would want to marry me, certainly he wouldn't. I think I was about 13 or 14, at just the age when sexual and social anxieties were foremost in my mind. This was one of the first times that I became aware that there could be things about me that were sexually and socially undesirable, and also that certain traits were inherently bad, and made me essentially unlovable.

That night I tried to sit and go through the Metta meditation, but was not even able to summon up lovingkindness for a child, as I was feeling so vulnerable and uncared-for myself. I tried to feel some lovingkindness for myself as well, but with similarly lack of success. I decided that I would practice self-care by going to bed rather that sitting.

Saturday: Mixers and Maturity

On Saturday evening, I went to a wedding where I felt a mix of emotions. Some were positive: happiness for my friends who were getting married, relief at having gotten there on time, joy at seeing an old friend I hadn't seen in a while, delight in the little funny things that happen at grand/solemn ceremonies. Some were what I would call negative: melancholy at the passage of time, sadness that I was not at this time anticipating my own marriage or celebrating with my love partner, some physical discomfort at the cold and my own hunger and, of course, guilt for not feeling an unadulterated joy.

Of all these emotions, I now see that only two were "present-oriented": the delight and the physical discomfort. I think also that these two emotions are strongly associated with children's reactions to such ceremonies.

At the dinner, I drank enough to be very pleasantly tipsy throughout.

Sunday: A man of substance

On Sunday, I had a sudden urge to buy and smoke a cigar. In retrospect I have some possible explanations (none or all of which may be true) for this urge:
1) My masculinity needed some bolstering after the somewhat tiring and dispiriting emotions of the previous two days.
2) Mordenti had mentioned smoking cigars the last time I saw him, and I was missing his company on Sunday.
3) I was sleep-deprived and seeking a stimulant to self-medicate.
4) I was horny from not having had sex for a while, and wanted to interact with something phallic.
5) I was craving novelty to once again tap into that feeling of delight which I knew I was capable of because of Saturday's ceremony.
6) I wanted to spend money on a "luxury" in order to revel in my ability to provide myself with things I wanted.

As I smoked, I thought about all the things the cigar represented, but I also thought about the physical details of smoking the cigar. It had been very difficult to light the cigar, a lot more so than a cigarette. Also, smoking a cigar required a very different action from smoking a cigarette. Instead of inhaling the smoke into my lungs, I tried to hold it in my mouth in order to taste the qualities of the tobacco. I was careful also to exhale, when I remembered, through my nose, the better to smell the smoke. A breathing exercise of sorts.

So what does it mean to smoke a cigar? It means all the things in that numbered list. But it also means all the things in the paragraph that follows. Smoking implies fire as well as loneliness; breathing as well as stimulation; tasting and taste.