The Story Stopped Where It Had To Stop

For two days I printed out all the postings to the blog, collected all the drawings that belonged to them and placed them all together in a box. I thought that the blog would be a book one day. I planned to do this printing and collecting in a slower pace, but something got into me and I did not leave this task until it was done. I read about half of the postings as I was waiting for them to be printed. Maybe I read more. Many pieces moved me again. I knew that this blog is one of the better things that I have done in my life. In the day that I finished printing and collecting drawings, I did not do another drawing for the blog. In the next day I had a feeling that the blog was finished.

I know I will be healed. I still have pain and it is even hard to bear, especially at night. But I know, and I even don’t know how I do, that it is being healed, and some time in the near future I will be without it. I also know that I have found what was behind it. Maybe I have to attend to the arising of feelings from that past life event a few more times. Maybe I have to deal with a few more issues. I surely did not finish working on everything that can be worked on, and I will continue. But I am already over the hill with the issue of the blog. It is not going to be more interesting as a blog and as a book by adding the last steps. 

I remember a story that I wrote years ago one night. I was on a winter retreat and got ill. There was no thermometer in the retreat center, at the feet of the Shawangunk Mountains, but I counted my heartbeats and they were 125 a minute all the time. When we crossed the snow-covered area on the way to the meditation hall I shivered uncontrollably. I took the liberty to sleep a bit more in the morning and go to bed a bit earlier in the night. We were meditating from 5am to 10 pm every day, and I cut off an hour from each end. I felt worse and worse but did not want to go home. I meditated quite well. On the night of the fifth day I decided that I’d go home, because I may die. I had a sharp pain in my chest. I was sure I had pneumonia, which turned out to be true. I wanted to call a taxi that would take me to a train station, then, from the other train station, in the end of the line, I would take the Path train and walk a few blocks to my home. One of the monks said he wouldn’t allow me to do this. Instead he would drive me home, which is a two and half hour trip each way, even with his crazy speed and the empty roads at night. I waited for him to finish the meditation at 10 and he took me home in the organization’s van. I lay in bed and could not sleep. There was a story in me that wanted to be written. I sat at my table and wrote fluently, until I got to a place in the story that I did not know where to go from. I told myself that in the next day I’d know what to do, and went to sleep at last.

In the morning I went to the story and read it, to see where it wanted to go next, but I found that the place where the story stopped was the end. It ended in an open question and this was the best place to stop.

Now I feel the same about this blog. There is no open question here but an open end and I can already see the destination down in the valley. 

So this is the end of Part 1 

There is more to do, and the next posting will start Part 2.

I used to be a graphic designer and an illustrator.  I became involved with the Chan Meditation Center and studied meditation and Buddhist knowledge with the late Master Sheng-yen from Taiwan. For twelve years I was in a process of deepening my meditation. I had many more experiences and insights and my life changed. After having illustrated more than 40 children’s books and writing two of them, I left this career too and went to New York University to study art therapy.

You can see more about Giora’s work on his blog and website