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Emma eating vines

spiritual life

A friend invited me to a crystal healing workshop.  I don't know much about crystals in terms of spiritual link/healing properties, so I figured I'd check it out.  I enjoyed the crystal teachings as far as allegoric symbols go, objects that are representations of something desired, or reminders of states of mind and spirit that we seek.  I enjoyed even more the meditation that accompanied the workshop.

I used to meditate a fair bit, and I found it very healing in the stage of my life where I was struggling with infertility.  I was spending lots of time reading about meditation, practicing, and even went to a three day workshop on lovinkindness meditation.  (I spent the first two days plotting how to get out and go shoe-shopping.  On the third day, I finally stood still and meditated).

The workshop reminded me, more than anything, that I am seeking that spiritual side of myself again.  I miss it.  I am so caught up in the happiness of being a mother, the fullness of having a child, and the busyness of everyday life, that I forget to connect with that side of me for which I do not have a name.  I need it.  I also need to connect more with my husband.  Emma is good at taking all of my attention, but it is my job to balance out my time and energy between all sides of me, and not just pour it into the mother-role.

All this in just one hour of meditation!  I am going back for more, probably every Saturday morning if I can wake up, and also will restart my own program at home, depending on how I feel inclined.

Are any of you into meditation?  What forms of it? what about other forms of spiritual practice or beliefs that are different than the mainstream?

Progress

Emma is standing and my parrot Max can say "mama".

ant invasion

We have an ant invasion.  As soon as I returned from Vancouver, where I was to celebrate my friend's beautiful wedding, we found ants in the house.  GIANT ants.  I am not kidding, I measured one of them today and it is almost three centimetres (over one inch).  They are black and scary.  I started my personal crusade against them by killing them systematically, one by one.  MrH, however, thinks that I am unnecessarily insane and that I should just let the poor suckers live their lives of toil and honest work, even if it entails tolerating big black inch-long ants crawling on the kitchen floor.  They only have a limited lifespan here in the North, and winter is sure to come again and kill them all.

Not enchanted with the idea of sharing my summer with these crawlers, I nevertheless have allowed a couple of them to live so far.  I have squished one, flushed one down the toilet, and threw the rest of the hoard out unharmed.  Since then, I am training myself not to look at them and to go about my life in peace, which is hard, because I seem to have an ant phobia.  An easy thing to explain if you look at one of these suckers.

Emma on the other hand has no such problems.  We were sitting on the kitchen floor, and she spotted an ant crawling past, grabbed it using her perfect pincer grasp, squished it a bit and put it in her mouth.  I tried really hard not to gag/hurl/yelp/shout/open-her-mouth-and-pull-out-the-disgusting-ant/ and generally did not want my daughter to react to my phobias, but rather to work out life for herself.  The ant must have tasted really good because she was quite happy to suck on it for a while.

Brrrr.
Brrrrrrrrr.
I. Cannot. Deal. With. This.

I mean really, what is it that I have such a strong response towards?  It was just a little insect, probably a kind, industrious little thing, but try as I may, I cannot shake the image of my beautiful daughter with an inch long black ant in her mouth.

'nuff said.