Ned Henry January 27, 2021 · nedhenry.medium.com

ACIM — Lesson 25- “ I do not know what anything is for.”

11 AM — Been a busy morning. I registered for a Shamhala talk tonight. “Ekajati: Queen of All Protectors.”I don’t know who that is but I’ll check it out. They invited me attend and it costs $10. I don’t respond to most of what I get on email from them but this one seemed interesting to me. It’s at 7:30 PM.

Had a zoom with the neurologist. All going well on the seizure front. No problems with the new med to control them. Have Yunus and math at noon. All good there. Hope I don’t scare him with my hair gone. Made some calls to Aubrey (if I have the right #) and my dental hygienist. Since they don’t want me to get my teeth cleaned until after chemo is over, I want to talk to her about what I can do to save the uppers. I couldn’t brush them for about a month. Just gauze and baking soda rubs. I can brush now thank God. The cancer in my mouth has receded enough for that. But since I can’t get them cleaned until May at the earliest, I want to know what I can do to help save them. I usually get my teeth cleaned every 4 months. And since my mouth is so dry, the only thing I am using is hard candy to keep my mouth moist. And of course that is not good for teeth. We’ll see what Misty has to say when she calls back.

My watch tells me I slept for 7 hours and 3 minutes with 3 hours and 23 minutes of deep sleep and 6 hours and 15 minutes of quality sleep. I’ll take it. I didn’t fall asleep right away after the Indica hits, but I relaxed and calmed down, listened to Bach piano, worked on ACIM lesson and sat with the weeping buddha and gradually made my way to the bedroom and laid down. And eventually drifted off. Better than buzzing around at night. I‘ll have to do that during the day and work on winding down intentionally at night. Had lots on those stoney insights but can’t remember them now. Probably not the right use of that word. We can just make up words you know. Gotta go get my lesson plan together for tutoring. I want to make sure Yunus is really clear on what a numerator is and what a denominator is in fractions. Not sure he really understands that yet. So If he has that, then we’ll continue with fraction calculations. If not we’ll keep going back until we find out exactly where he feels secure with his math. He’s a long way from Freshman Algebra which is what he’s taking in high school. I’d love to snap my fingers and have him all caught up. But it doesn’t work that way, at least not for now. It will be good to see him especially since we missed last week. So I’ll be back after tutoring and lunch and a couple of calls. Listening to some playlist that Apple music made up for me. It’s OK.

1:30 PM — Yunus didn’t show up again. He has one last shot or he’s out of the tutoring program and I’ll probably get another kid. We’ll see if he gets it together next week. Debbie across the street is going to Publix for me. I’m so foutunate to have folks tell me when they are going shopping and ask if I need anything. I sent her a list. She teaches — kindergarten I think — so she will go to the store after school. And I am going to make shepherd’s pie again only this time with the right ingredients instead of so many substitutions. It was good last time. Should be better this time. Misty hasn’t called yet. So I’m gonna do some reading and come back later.

3:30 PM I do not know what anything is for.

9 PM — What a great day this has been. John just called and told me about Gillian Welch so I’m listening to her right now. Had a good chat. He’s gonna help me stain my new back fence this Spring sometime. Debbie across the street did some perfect shopping for me. Read the chapter in Carey’s book about the dog Sadie when she died. Mde me tear up. Liz is coming over tomorrow and I think we will do some proprioceptive writing together on the back deck if it’s warm enough. Have not done that in a while but I have a bluetooth speaker and can cue up some baroque music and we can let the pens fly where they want to fly. That will be fun. Missed the news — oh well — not gonna get it every day. Had a wonderful visit with Aubrey on the phone. We must have spoken for over an hour. She lives in Athens now. Her boys — Sylvan is now a doctor at Stanford and Adrian is a renowned and becoming world famous artist living in LA. It was just so good to catch up with her after all these years. We reminisced, remembered and appreciated and encouraged each other. So good to be back in touch. Ate eggs and salmon and am drinking a home made mango lassi. Not as good as in a good Indian restaurant but also not as sweet. Frozen Mango, yogurt and a couple of other things. I even threw some chipolte powder in it.

So I get this email from Shambhala. Now I haven’t gone to anything Shambhala in years. Never could get into the whole lineage emphasis and the power they give it. I practiced the Shambhala path anyway not the buddhist path. That was kind of a Western path that Chögyam Trungpa Rimpoche created for Westerners to practice presence. But there was a talk tonight by someone I knew and respected about a deity that I was not familiar with — Ekajati. Here she is.Google Image Result for…Edit descriptionwww.google.com

Wish I could make the image bigger. There are lots of images of her but this is the one Valerie used in her talk. Valerie and I used to run into each other in the pool at the Y once in a while long after I had left the sangha. Anyway, I think you have to buy the image for a shrine or something to get a bigger one. You can google Ekajati and see all the different images of her. She is a fierce protector deity full of symbolism which I won’t go into detail about except to say she embodies the traits of both maleness and femaleness. She is strong and fierce and nurturing and protecting. The talk was very good, informative and brought me back into those years of practicing meditation daily. There was even one guy on Zoom from Karme Choling in Vermont which is the Shambhala center I have been to 2 times but where I first met David my financial guy. It was good to see the shrine room where he sat and listened to the talk. After the talk we chanted. Let me see if I can find that. Can’t. It might be secret anyway. But it was very good and Valerie went over it line by line and then we chanted it. I even remembered how to chant which really surprised me. Then we closed with the dedication of merit which I had completely forgotten.

Through this goodness may awakening spontaneously arise in our streams of being. May all obscurations and distortions fall away. May all beings be liberated from suffering, and the stormy waves of birth, sickness, old age, and death.

By this merit may all attain omniscience. May it defeat the enemy, wrong-doing. From the stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death, from the ocean of samsara, may I free all beings.

I do not know what anything is for.