Setting your intention: a practical approach

Hag with a big bag of sh--

I used a little positive thinking to apply to my conundrum of the other day, and it worked.

See, I lost track of Maggie’s “output” again. The brown leaves of late autumn make that one special chore of responsible dog ownership a little tough.

With this light dusting of snow we got today, scooping the poop will be so much easier. I sound like a total lame-ass. Why do I like winter? “Well, there’s skiing and it’s easier to find and bag the dog shit.”

So, I made a point of looking for other shit and disposing of it in order to balance things out in the universe—that little bit.

Boy, did I find it. The first pile I happened upon looked like it was left by a small pony. Definitely not Maggie’s. She would have needed stitches.

After I set my intention to pick up shit wherever I found it, I found it in spades:

• near the schoolyard
• on the sidewalk with shoe treads squashed into it
• bagged and hanging on a tree
• at work (just kidding!)

But, luckily not on the bottom of my shoe. See, I find that lucky. It’s all about having the right aspirations.

Looking for shit in all the wrong places

Watching my dog run and jump and chase the ball makes me very happy. At the risk of anthropomorphizing my little Australian Shepherd, Maggie: she looks so joyful when she’s outside.

And that makes me joyful.

But when I’m bending down to the ground, trying to locate her brown shiny turds on the brown shiny leaves of late autumn, I get frustrated.

Here I am trying to scoop her poop like a responsible pet owner and I can’t find it. I’m being thwarted by the frickin’ environment.

Then I get philosophical and start thinking about “shit” in existential terms.

When we look for shit (in the form of offense or things that piss us off--like lice), we often find it. It’s a the-glass-ain’t-just-half-empty-it-has exploded-into-tiny-shards-on-the-tile-floor-and-a-piece-just-got-stuck-in-my-foot kinda thinking.

My grandmother called it fault finding. You may have forgiven someone their trespasses against you, but you’ve always got your hairy eyeball out for the next transgression.

And most of the time, we get offended because we’re so egotistical that we think that a person’s sole motivation was to hurt our feelings in some way. More often than not, people are just doing what they’re doing to get by, but we misread the situation completely.

I like to say that if you walk around with your head in the toilet, you’ll always find shit.

But, when you’re looking on the brown shiny ground for the remains of last night’s Alpo, it’s nowhere to be found.

Sometimes, you just have to let things go.

After I resolve to locate it next time, I call Maggie and take that first step on our return journey. Then, there’s that squishy, sinking feeling under my shoe and the smell hits me in the nose.

There are two ways to interpret this situation:

1. Sometimes even when you let go, the shit finds you, or
2. When you surrender, you find what you’re looking for…sort of.

A peaceful titan or Madonna in lingerie?

The reasons for coming to Shambhala that rainy night were eclectic among our group. There was my fictional reason, stress relief, for help with depression, and my favorites:

• further develop one’s psychic ability, and
• complete a fourth-year assignment to try something new.

The university student brought along her boyfriend, who sat at the ready to yank her out of there and run for the door if it started to resemble some weird cult.

After making sure everyone was comfortable—extra cushions or a chair for those who needed them (not me, I could sit cross legged because I was fit and did yoga regularly), it was time for simple instruction:

• Keep your eyes open and the gaze forward on the floor without focusing on anything in particular.
• Just breathe and be still.

It was off to the meditation races. Here’s what my inner life looked like for those few minutes:

• My ankles are starting to hurt. How am I supposed to think of nothing when my ankles hurt?
• Back to the breath.
• Gotta remember the followup lice treatment. It’s a miracle our washing machine hasn’t kacked out with all the insect troubles we’ve had to deal with over the last two years.
• If I find gnits on their heads after Round 2 of treatment, we’ll have to do 12 more loads of laundry. I’ll want to run away from home.
• Breathe
• Maybe I can whittle our wardrobes down to five outfits each.
• Oli should sign up for this. It’d be good for him.
• Shut up!
• Must get Sauvignon Blanc for Saturday. And red wine for Friday too for that matter.
• What’s Tibetan for: She who has the attention span of a gnat?

“Time’s up. Anyone have any thoughts?”

I snorted. That’s all I was—a seething mass of thoughts that make me feel dissatisfied and snarly.

Henry shared a Buddhist anecdote about imagining we’re in a house, with the front and back doors open.

“Just let the thoughts pass on through,” he said. “Don’t serve them tea and cookies.”

That’s what I was doing wrong. I was busy renovating, growing heirloom tomatoes, preparing a 10 course-meal, and opening the door for the jangling horde of uninvited thoughts.

Then we took another crack at it. Here’s how it went:

• Breathe.
• Maybe I’ll sign up for a course here.
• Just thinking. Breathe.
• Breathe.
• I wonder how often these cushions get cleaned?
• Breathe.
• Someone here is a really loud breather.
• Breathe
• Hey, it’s quiet in my head. Shit! I ruined it.

That was much better.

I figure that if I could achieve a few more seconds of mental peace, then I’d probably stymie it by getting irritated by my own blinking.

On Sundays, they meditate for two hours here. Two hours!

The rockstars of Buddhism (not to be confused with Buddhist rockstars) go on retreats that last for three years, three months and three days.

Start with smaller amounts of time, Henry suggested.

I learned to run one minute at a time. I’ll meditate one minute at a time, until my brain becomes a peaceful titan, or maybe my brain will become muscular, yet svelte like Madonna in lingerie. Figuratively speaking.

I have a small head; no titan would ever fit in there.