I feel compassion for my younger self who was already in the middle stage of life and didn't know what to do and was looking for healing and community.
Tonight I was just by myself and I went to the Disneyland of pumpkin patches, and on this particular day, I could get in for free because I was a local. And now my curiosity is satisfied. I didn't feel tempted by any of their food because I had chocolate cake in the middle of the day. And I walked around for several hours.
I actually think I have more peace of mind now than when I was younger. And remember when I went to an event featuring Amma, the hugging saint. The entourage that was with her seemed not very friendly, so I decided I was only visiting their community. But I remember thinking I just don't know what to do or how to feel better.
Sometimes I would go to a free meditation class, with optional donation, and I actually felt like going to this class was helping me preserve my sanity. A lot of traumatic stuff was happening. But even there, the guys in charge would sometimes make these weird jokes. And I noticed that some women in the class would look at each other and frown, and I didn't really care for the jokes either. I was thinking things like, I'm trying to heal from some very serious stuff and you have to ruin the peacefulness with your joke even though you have all this wonderful meditation knowledge.
But some sexist humor was coming through even though the meditation man was with a spiritual girlfriend. But it's possible that somebody else talked to them about it or else they picked up on it psychically because then at another subsequent meditation session they were confessional and shame-faced about the sexist thoughts they'd had in the past. They said that when they were younger they used to look at women as makeable or not makeable, and then they realized that they were not well in looking at women that way.
Well, that was a long time ago but I was thinking about it lately. Even as I was walking around the pumpkin fair with my thoughts. There were some very young people on dates and two couples at two separate places asked me to take their picture. I'm kind of glad I looked like a safe person to them.
Back to my thoughts about the meditation guy, back in 2009 or so. I remember when he said he and some friends were on retreat and then they went out to get an ice cream cone and the sound of police siren went off nearby and they were in such a strange state of mind that they ducked under the car dashboard to hide because they felt like they were going to get arrested for indulging in an ice cream cone.
That was a funny story.
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