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.
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