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"There&amp;#039;s a lot of talk these days about meditation, but what exactly does that mean? And what does it entail for marriage? After all, if a life-long union is about being permanently connected to somebody else, why on earth would one want to &amp;quot;detach&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;find oneself&amp;quot; instead? For me, one has no choice but to search for self within marriage. After all, if you don&amp;#039;t know who you are, why would you expect your mate to answer it for you? Similar to being a good parent, or being a stellar team mate, if you don&amp;#039;t take care of your side of the equation, what good will you contribute to the team? Some of you might say that searching for self happens before you are married. And to that I give a hearty, &amp;quot;Hooray for you! That is a very logical conclusion!&amp;quot; But honestly, what do any of us really know about our true nature before the &amp;quot;I do&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; kick in? With 50% of marriages ending in divorce, I think we have our answer. For kicks and giggles, I&amp;#039;ll simplify that it&amp;#039;s one thing to take care of ourselves. It&amp;#039;s quite another to do it with another human being and little rug rats screaming for sippy cups and juice boxes. Where&amp;#039;s the sublime magic in chaos? Where&amp;#039;s the Norman Rockwell postcard idealizing the day you find out your kid has Tourette Syndrome and your dad is about to kick the bucket? (No, not talking about my life. Never!) Do I sound jaded? I don&amp;#039;t mean to. For a while, I was angry. Just check out some of my posts this summer. But now? Not so much. Why? Because I&amp;#039;m learning to transcend. I&amp;#039;m learning that nothing is perfect. You can&amp;#039;t live in the past. You can&amp;#039;t live in the future. All that matters is right now. This moment. The present is the gift. Eckhart Tolle&amp;#039;s The Power of Now speaks to this in spades. I&amp;#039;m far from enlightened, but even on my crankiest days, like that brass ring just beyond my fingertips on an exhilarating carousel ride, I feel a sense of liberation. Kat Tansey knows a bit about this. In her book Choosing to Be: Lessons In Living from a Feline Zen Master, Tansey talks about her journey from suicidal depression to enlightenment. She didn&amp;#039;t get there through retail therapy, extra marital affairs, popping out extra babies or moving halfway across the world. She got there by - are you ready for this - sitting still. Along with her Maine Coon cat, Tansey learned to channel her inner Buddha and find peace within less than perfect circumstances. How? Simple! Everything she needed was in her. Peace wasn&amp;#039;t derived from her job. (Her dream business went bust.) It wasn&amp;#039;t from her health. (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome followed by major depression? Not exactly a recipe for happiness.) It wasn&amp;#039;t from her spouse. (He was awesome and supportive. But guess what? He wasn&amp;#039;t a miracle worker. Neither is mine and neither is yours.) True peace came from doing the bravest and most painful thing of all: It came from quieting her mind and accessing her true Buddha nature which, as it turns out, is perfect. Good news! So is yours. As a writer, I am the first to admit that my &amp;quot;monkey mind&amp;quot; is what helps me create wacky characters and original music in my side jobs. But when I take that same stream-of-consciousness style and place them on my emotions, what I end up with is a recipe for crazy. And trust me; despite writing a sex column for a living while juggling two children and an EBay business from hell, I&amp;#039;m not crazy. What I am is doing too much. I&amp;#039;m not being. I&amp;#039;m not slooooowwwing... dooooooown....and letting my true authentic Buddha-like self do the talking. Lest you think I&amp;#039;m going to join an Ashram Elizabeth Gilbert style, I&amp;#039;ll state for the record that I&amp;#039;m staying right here: A boring Catholic in a cull de sac who drinks Yuban and feels guilty if I down two glasses of wine. But (hey, who doesn&amp;#039;t love a cute &amp;#039;but&amp;#039;) I will live as a boring Catholic who lives life consciously. And often, quite opposite about what we have been conditioned to think, I will continue to practice meditation to &amp;quot;empty my mind&amp;quot; - allowing my most authentic self to run the show. As I detach from my ego - and find my true nature through sitting still - I am also detaching from Rex. I am not leaving him - far from it! I am, however, leaving behind old misconceptions of what I thought marriage was supposed to do. This detachment will allow me to re-attach to who I&amp;#039;m supposed to be as a &amp;quot;self&amp;quot; within a union. Guess what I&amp;#039;m rediscovering? A passionate, joyful, soulful human being who gives to my union rather than drains it with unrealistic notions of how it can fulfill me. It can enrich me! But it can never, ever, be the thing that defines me. What a liberation! I can be me! I can then give to Rex so he can be him! And then, we can have mind blowing sex - together! Hooray for mediation! Perhaps I&amp;#039;ll dress as Buddha and rock his world when he comes home from Germany. Can you just imagine his surprise when Super Shuttle drops him off to find his wife standing near the geraniums in a fat suit with a shower cap simulating Buddha&amp;#039;s bald head? As we head into Thanksgiving, I hope you&amp;#039;ll consider thanking the Buddha within you. Don&amp;#039;t know how? Take a few moments and meditate. You&amp;#039;ll thank me for it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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