Yesterday, after thinking that I must find a way to live with the conflict and the desire for my Mother, my parents, and wanting to return home to them I bumped across a series of videos on how to meditate on YouTube by Yuttadhamma (http://www.youtube.com/yuttadhammo).
I watched videos 1 through 5. (You can get a summary of the message but not the actual technique from the Vipassana Meditation page of the Sirimangalo organization's website: http://www.sirimangalo.org/vipassana) After watching these videos I realized that in order to live with the conflict and desire for my Mother I must put forth effort and know this with my mind, feel this desire fully and acknowledge it by articulating it in a sentence in my mind and also out loud. The key here is to really put forth the effort to know, to know and fully experience and be with these longings/sensations, and acknowledge them by putting them into language.
By thinking about this, I recognize what I didn't recognize yesterday when I was writing my entry. I had enough wit to know that I was not really suffering from ignorance. Desire yes, but ignorance seemed like a cop out. This is because I am not in fact suffering from ignorance but doubt. I understand that now. I have a lot of evidence but the reason it doesn't make an impact and calm me down is because I don't live mindfully, don't fully meditate on my existence with all its attendant desires, thoughts, emotions. I don't really experience my life with consciousness. If I did that then the argument over the question of who my parents are will be over. If I can experience with consciousness and mindfullness my longing for my Mother there is no authority on this planet or in any realm that can counter argue the truth of this. I am not playacting for any one's benefit in my heart. I am not writhing in suffering for some one's viewing pleasure. The second I really meditate on this experience, the ignorance vanishes, the doubt vanishes. I am no longer in suffering. Suffering then comes from a lack of acknowledgement of my longing, the truth of my longing for my Mother, of not living in the present and fully experiencing my life mindfully.
I don't need a single argument or piece of evidence beyond the truth, the reality of my longing, the presence of my longing, my yearning for my Mother. There is nothing else needed. I don't need physical evidence. Everything else is tangential. I am not here to prove anything to anybody. I will not free myself from suffering if others know or believe I am not the daughter of the people I grew up with. I will free myself from suffering by acknowledging the truth of my own experience, seeing the reality of my longing.
I want to go home. In experiencing this longing for my Mother, in living this yearning fully mindfully and with consciousness and articulating it in language the conflict vanishes. How can there by doubt when I am busy experiencing the desire to go home, the desire for my Mother? How can I fully support opposite positions in a conflict over who my parents are: the people I grew up with are my biological parents vs. No! the people I grew up with are not my biological parents!"? In the midst of the reality of experiencing myself screaming in pain for my mother I cannot stand there arbitrarily saying that some other woman is my mother. It makes no sense. If she were my mother I would not be in the condition I am enduring. The very existence of this longing is sufficient proof that the woman I grew up with is in fact not my Mother. I do not need any further proof from reality that the people I grew up with are not my parents.
To maintain peacefulness then requires me to live mindfully 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If I live constantly in truth, in reality then I can see that there is nothing to fight over. Of course the desire for my Mother doesn't go away. Nor is the question of who my parents are the only issue that needs monitoring in my life. There are a plethora of things that I am constantly being deluged with at every moment. But I feel like if I can manage the desire to go home, if I know that I have it, at least this one problem will cease to have such a deletrious capacity to skew my experience of present moment reality. If I don't acknowledge that I have this desire then it can be a nightmare trying to live life. The source of my problem is not living mindfully. By living mindfully all the time, I can stay in touch with what I am feeling, what I am thinking. By doing this I can see for example that I want to go home, I want to see my Mother. When I acknowledge this desire, then there is no doubt that the people I grew up with are not in fact my parents.
One final note to all this is that in all fairness I have to state I am not sure if my interpretation and use of the materials presented in the meditation videos and the sirimangalo website is really in line with the intention of its authors. I have been wrestling with the problem of how to not forget my insights and conclusions about my situation and history. It had not occurred to me to keep saying this all the time. It had not occurred to me to live with this truth from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. I thought that once I had figured it out I was done with the problem. My question to my self was "How do I remember these things? What can I do to keep these things in my mind?" The meditation videos and the Sirimangalo website made me aware that there is a possibility which I had not considered: Go ahead and devote myself to the project of constantly reminding myself of my insights and conclusions. This is okay. In fact it is good to pay attention to your mind. It is not necessary to always be thinking about something or nothing. In fact living life is about paying attention to your mind - paying attention to your mind (mental phenomena) and body (body phenomena).
