Spirit, Self, Books, and People

Western philosophy is pretty much about freeing the mind from the body. About learning and acquiring knowledge. I find this very comfortable as someone who has sought to enrich her mind with as much as she can cram in there. Yet I feel a huge disconnect following this philosophy and while I respect, understand, and find comfort and familiarity in it, I don't think that's how I want to be for the rest of my life. I want to be connected to people and to God and just to be connected and feel apart of it all.

I'm very intellectual, as a friend told me recently, but I find that I'm also very spiritual. I feel off when I haven't tried grasping new facets of faith, like I'm empty. I took an Introduction to Psychology course in my first semester of college. In the class, I learned so much but the thing that I took out of it most was meditation. For one whole class period, we meditated. The professor lead us through various techniques and I know that after that class I felt more refreshed than I had since I was a little girl and still took naps. My body was relaxed, my mind was calm, my heart was light, and I could think more clearly about the things that had ben troubling me before class. Since then, I've only meditated a few times and every time with the same result but I haven't meditated in months and I can feel it as much as I know it.

Did you ever see the movie 'Dogma'? It's quite hilarious if you haven't. I'm thinking of one scene, in particular, that I seem to relate to quite a bit today. The female lead who's name escapes me is at work talking with her coworker about having gone to church the day before. She says that when she was a kid, she was like a cup overflowing with faith and now that's not the case. Her coworker tells her something she'd hard her rabbi say. That when you're a child, your cup is smaller so it's easier to fill but as you grow, so does your cup, making it harder to fill. I know what that feels like.

Today I watched Eat Pray Love. If you have not heard of this Julia Roberts movie, you should go look it up. It reminded me of what I've been lacking lately. I realized, after the movie and then listening to some music, that I've been neglecting my soul, my heart. I've been focusing on gaining knowledge and forgetting to find any wisdom. A new friend asked me what I believe recently and I was only able to give him the basics because, as I told him though I'm not sure that it's true anymore, I hadn't figured out the rest. He told me this was sad because he thinks I'm brilliant and would be an excellent person to discuss the matter with. I think it's sad for a different reason. In being blessed with rapid recovery from surgery, a wonderful and flawed guy who puts up with me, great friends who've been there through it all, and most of all a beautiful family who love and support me despite my short comings, I forgot how to be thankful. I forgot where my heart was. I forgot what I knew to be true. I lost my balance.

So, here's my New Year's resolution. I'm changing my focus. I've spent a long time just helping others and not helping myself, filling my head with knowledge and emptying my heart of meaning. I became cynical, jaded, sarcastic, and slightly pessimistic and this is not who I want to be. Instead of just filling my head, I will also be filling my heart.