Standing in awe is not only paying attention, it is entering into dialogue with creation.  We are entering into the barriers to communication.  The beauty that we see fills us, and we in turn can pour that beauty back out into the world.

-Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

Day 350 – Looking for a bit of inspiration, I read this and that, not really connecting to Day 349 or The Celtic Spirit.  Samadhi is a weighty subject, one with which I haven’t quite arrived, and I had to ask myself why that is.  For one, I’ve been plagued by a migraine the whole long weekend and now self-pity for having to return to work.  My head hurt on Friday so I didn’t type up my lesson plans at school (but they are written).   I feel slightly off kilter still, but I got up at my usual 4 a.m. and plopped down on the yoga mat to do a series of dance conditioning exercises and pilates followed by some yoga.  My neck and shoulders are ridiculously tight and tender, but (thankfully) my headache seems to be almost gone.

In Meditations on Intention and Being (Day 45), Rolf talks about nonattachment and, thus, my inspiration for today’s blog post.  I have an unhealthy attachment–jealousy, really–to a coworker’s ability to land scholarships and sources of funding to go to post-graduate school.  I am so attached to the idea and desire to continue my schooling and I spend my days planning what I would take, where I would go, what I want to study, etc.  It does sound like a worthy pursuit and I know I am intellectually competant, but it is not a lucrative investment (unless it is fully paid), nor is it practical, at this point in my life.  Moreover, it is not needed to teach public school (or any other school) in the near future, and it is definitely not a huge step in career advancement.  And it is becoming a really unhealthy attachment because I get pissed off every time I hear about my colleague, especially when I am at work doing things I think this person should be doing.

In any case, Rolf describes attachment as when we “give out attention to something, give our time, give our strength, our faith, our love, our appreciation, our money, our food, even our lives.”  Attachment is us giving all of this, which are ours to give freely, but it is “something extra and unnecessary that negates the action we are taking.”  In other words, all this attachment to my colleague and this idea is actually unnecessary and negative and is keeping me from samadhi in the workplace.  It is impossible to give love without letting go.