Overwhelmed.

Dragonfly, dragonfly, fly me up to the sky, drag down the Moon, bring her to me, in our hearts we shall sing.

Its been a stressful time in my life, on many fronts. Some very positive, some not so positive. I am moving house soon, and this is a welcome event, though wrapped with stress and complexities. My health has been sub-par recently and I find my brain sputtering, like a car engine with bad spark plugs. My glands are painful and I am very run down.

I am an American living in the UK and I am recently experiencing feelings of being a foreigner due to some restructuring at my employment. Although I have permanent residency here, I am still technically an alien and this might cause some issues in keeping my job. I have verbal assurances it wont but nothing in writing yet.

So, in times like these, where I have to be very focused and attentive and keep track of multiple highly important things going on, I have been keeping a quote from Pema Chodron in my mind: “Start where you are”.

I love this saying. It is so obvious, so simple, yet so full of wisdom. I am frequently feeling overwhelmed and lacking the necessary cognitive tools to navigate through this phase of complexity; however, keeping this phrase in my mind’s eye has proved very helpful and calming. Centering.

This, and also lists, many many lists!!!

Most people have times in their lives like this… very complex, very busy and feeling more than just a bit under the weather… During these times, meditation is very interesting to say the least. We see how fast our minds are racing, for me, my thoughts seem to be a collection of many many dogs, all of whom are chasing their tails…. All these thoughts going circular, never settling and just creating more stress . Clearly seeing our situation, whether calm or chaotic, is very important. My ‘vision’ is very hazy right now, due to my brain’s sparkplugs needing cleaning, so to speak, but I can see clearly that I am foggy, and that’s ok. I still know the moon is up there, behind those clouds, beyond my foggy ground and its pull, its gravity, can always be felt and I can never be separate from it, even if I tried!

My deep faith in the Universe’s love makes me smile, that, as well as coming home to my wonderful wife and my little boy, 2 years old, who now regularly is calling me ‘papa’. How wonderful!