Day 11-21: Between Times 2 (May 22-June 1)

May 22:  A New True North
Day 11, ONE Yoga, Denver, Colorado

The day after Red Rocks, I had an opportunity to attend a yoga class with one of my favorite teachers.  I grounded into the feelings of completeness and satisfaction I had gained from my sober night at Red Rocks the night before.  I felt content and happy and free.

As the class ended, Gurupriya Beth suggested that we might let peace and tranquility be our new true north.  While I lay there in savasana, I loved the sound of that plan.  That sounded like it would work very well.  That felt like a goal that I could thrive within.

At the same time, it occurred to me that I was aiming for something else in these days of following the band; something other than peaceful thriving and stable discovery of recovery.  Again I was observing myself being, seemingly irresistibly, drawn into these days where "we look for something other". (http://www.u2.com/lyrics/77)

The draw of that "something other" had me torn in two again.  I refused to let this sudden awareness bother me though.   In less than 2 weeks, I would be back in Soldier Field with my brother for the first time since June 27, 1997, when we met up in Chicago for PopMart.  Nothing could bother me, looking forward to that.  My plan was a heady forget-yer-troubles elixir, no doubt.

That evening, I was distracted from my MA phone meeting by scrolling through the Facebook fan groups.  An all too familar post of outrage and agony began to dominate my feed.  "Manchester, why?  No more!".  Oh no god, not again.  My heart sank into my belly as I read the latest news.  Teenagers at a pop concert in the Manchester Arena were gone tonight.

As the conversation turned from agonizing to furious finger pointing, I worked to keep my own vibration locked into love over fear.

May 23:  Collaborative Expansion
Day 12, The Children's Hospital, Aurora, CO

The next morning, the early assumption that the attack in Manchester had been a terrorist act was confirmed.  I sat in meditation for the victims and then I disconnected from the drama of social media, planning to stay grounded in Denver while focusing on love over fear, until it would be time to leave for Chicago in 10 days.

I took some time to meet with my mentor at work about the medically therapeutic yoga initiative that I was heading.  Everything was moving along right on time.  New possibilities of the work presented daily, and I was grateful.

In one of the U2 fan groups on Facebook, before I chose to take a hiatus from the agonized outrage threads that had flooded my wall and drawn me into drama, I had linked to an article about U2's connection with Generation X.  How we had grown up with their music, and heard it before we even knew what music was.  How we had been programmed to like it.  I saw a sudden similarity:  in my recovery from addiction to substances, I was learning that I had been programmed with misunderstandings that had led me to believe concepts which later became the basis of self-destructive behaviors. [Note: I can't find this article  months later as I am getting ready to post this today.  If anyone knows it, or has a link to it, please let me know in comments, thank you!]

Could my over-the-top U2 fandom have grown out of such another misaligned program that had happened in my own early development?  If so, would I be able to find a life of still greater peace and tranquility by de-activating the malware and re-orienting  myself to a more grounded reality?  I, of course, desired a peaceful reality that still included U2 music and U2 concerts, as long as there were U2 concerts to get to.

Sure there had to be a way.  Sure I could move forward through the shows I had planned running up through the summer solstice with such a re-orientation in mind. I could give it a try, anyway.

May 24-June 1: Business as Usual (For a Change)
Day 13-21, Denver, CO

I spent the week working on my routines and playing in normalcy: work, daughter, recovery, writing.  I didn't find much time for yoga asana, though my daily meditation practice continued, and deepened.  With daily practice, the doorway to peace in my heart was becoming easier and easier to access.  I went there every day, intending to share the love and peace I was finding, to spread it around in an increasingly chaotic and terrified world, this knowledge of, and access to, truly solid ground within.

#viewfrommybalcony

Day 10: Hello My Old Heart

Day 10
May 21: Denver, Colorado

 I got to spend some time with Cate and her daughter, and my own daughter in the morning of Sunday May 21st. We parted ways in early afternoon to let my little one have a nap, and so that Cate could take her very excited young lady up to Red Rocks, where the fans were already assembling for the festivities to come this evening. I took my Julie over to her dad's house for the night then headed out to the ampitheatre where U2 had recorded their breakthrough live concert experience on a dramatic rainy night 34 years prior. U2 had come so far in the decades since that performance, and so had we all, really.  I was feeling immensely blessed to be heading there at this particularly magical time in my own journey.

 In 1992, when I had visited Denver with my folks during the summer after I became obsessed with U2, but before my own first U2 concert experience in August of that year, I had only one request for my parents. I needed them to take me to Red Rocks, not to explore the geographical wonders there, only to stand in the same space I knew Bono had stood less than a decade before that teenage pilgrimage.

 Now, in 2017, as I walked the long incline from the lower lot to the line of fans that wound around the rocks awaiting entry to the ampitheatre, I had many of my own memories that had come since I had moved to Denver fifteen years ago. Most, perhaps all, of these memories were hazy pot-and-alcohol infused impressions. This would be the first concert I would attend at Red Rocks since I had began my process of recovery nearly 18 months ago. I was excited and blissful, inspired and grateful, as I found my place at the end of the line of fans.

 We could hear the first band playing as we wound our way toward the ampitheatre entrance. I thought of U2 friends who had been stuck outside BC Place while Mumford and Sons were playing, and I was mindful of my graceful feeling: to be in the midst of such beauty, so full of contentment as I gazed upon the surrounding beauty in these Rocky Mountain foothills.

Before too long, and just as The Oh Hellos took the stage, I found Cate and her daughter in Row 19.  To be in Red Rocks, free of the burden of alcohol or marijuana, with this captivating young band wonderously emanating the sound of pure love from this gorgeous stage... I felt I had stepped into a dream.  There was a relief there, a sense of "There is no end to love", as the magic of The Oh Hellos' freshness captivated the crowd.

There was one song from The Oh Hellos which came out around the time I was pregnant with Julie.  The song had touched me so deeply those years ago that I had included it in a yoga class play list, during a brief time when I taught a small local yoga class.  The song is called "Hello My Old Heart".

This evening, the song's lyrical bridge rang out like a clarion call through the ampitheatre, where a cool rain was beginning to drip down over us.

"Nothing lasts forever 
Some things aren't meant to be 
But you'll never find the answers 'til you set your old heart free 
'Til you set your old heart free! 
Hello my old heart...!" 

 Chills and tingles raced from the crown of my head and all the way through my body to my fingers and toes as tears sprang to my eyes. I sat down, remembering how Bono had sung "free yourself to be yourself; if only you could see yourself" during the I/e tour, and how even then through a haze of alcohol, I would know that I was being called to free myself of my addictions to alcohol and pot. At that time, I hadn't known how!... I hadn't known how to face my fear of trying for a life free of alcohol and marijuana. Only two years later, here I was at Red Rocks in the rain, feeling the childlike amazement of my old heart, beating free, now seen, and felt, and loved once again.

Later that night, after exchanging goodbyes with lovely Cate and her daughter,  I walked out completely satisfied, heart full.  I felt complete, and I still had three or four U2 concerts right in front of me, approaching surely on this journey of 40 days and nights.