Suzaji’s Blog

Last night I finally opened the boxes of journals that I’ve been schlepping around for three years, and OMG, it’s like opening Pandora’s box!

My cats are so excited, hopping into and around the boxes; they can feel the erratic energy flying around. It’s all there—except for the early journals from the 60s that, in an attempt to free me from the past, a boyfriend had me burn. (So these journals go back to the 70s and 80s)

It remains to be seen why I feel compelled to turn my kitchen into an office so that I can arrange all these crazy life stories into the form of a book; it may just be for my own integration. I only know that, unless I do this, I cannot sleep. I have this idea that, if I spread everything out in the open, then when I wake up at 2 a.m. I can go right to my writing table and in nine months birth my next book.

I’ve already laughed in the face of all the obstacles. It is so blatantly obvious that money is not always a true measure of success. Nor is lack of money always a true measure of failure. (I have a stack of books by authors who died in poverty and were buried in unmarked graves. I hope that doesn’t happen to me.)

When I see rock star yoga teachers teaching mega classes with hundreds of students, I remind myself that this phenomenon occurs in every belief system. In the religious world there are wildly successful charismatic ministers with mega services that, in their size, leave mega yoga classes in the dust.

When I visit my parents, I’m reminded that there is no end to the belief systems in this world and no lack of evidence to substantiate just about any belief, from far left to far right to heaven above and hell below. My dad is so looking forward to seeing his mother, who died decades ago, in heaven—he mentions her every time I visit. He is surrounded by books on the afterlife—a far different afterlife than the one described in metaphysical books, but equally compelling.

My journals reflect the mind of a mad woman who has possibly thrown out the baby with the bathwater. But at least I’m aware that I’m insane. I recall some years ago challenging the reality of a longtime friend with dementia. She looked me square in the eye and told me in no uncertain terms, “Don’t you think that if I’d lost my mind I’d be the first to know it?” (Found this gem in my journals, too.)

I don’t mind if the whole world subscribes to the Law of Attraction that says like attracts like, you attract what you need, and you create your own reality. It doesn’t matter to me what people believe, so long as they don’t mind if I don’t believe it!

Yes, there is karma and there are laws of nature, but I cannot in good conscience pretend that I know how it all works. That North Korean sociopath dictator who sits in his palace while his starving people reportedly turn to cannibalism is not rich because of good karma. The young woman killed yesterday by the Taliban was caught up in circumstances beyond her control. I don’t believe she attracted being tortured and shot.

My own life has not been a life-and-death drama, but my journals reveal the heavy religious conditioning, the brainwashing from birth, the deeply embedded patriarchal belief system I was born into.

On March 3, 1996, I wrote these words on the road to freedom: “Over and over I see that, for me, my relationship with the man in my life is the core of my life . . . it is either cultural conditioning or my female nature. Maybe when I’m 50, after men-o-pause, I won’t be like this, but today [and all the years prior] I am in this [incomplete] state . . . ”

Underneath this telling entry I wrote down my horoscope for the week of March 7-14, which asked: “Can you build a bridge and burn it at the same time?”

Fifteen years later I can unequivocally say, “Yes!”

Tags: earthly concerns, journal writing, relationships, wounded daughter, writing yoga

This entry was posted on February 7, 2013 at 12:30 am and is filed under Life in Ojai, New Memoir Chapters, Yoga Writing Memoir. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.