A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

why it couldn’t be achieved on a comfy sofa. I also wondered when I’d finally see Emily and be able to stop this whole thing already.

Lunch was announced. It had only been 30 minutes since we’d started. We were supposed to begin again at 4:30 the next morning. God, what was I thinking? A kibbutz cafeteria cart rolled into the yurt and I hoped that Emily would peer out from behind it, but instead there appeared a scrawny bald guy.

At night, I dreamt about my clinic. It was full of women, friends of mine from different periods in my life. Two of them, Dafna and Nina, are big-bodied mamas who deal with therapy all day long. Dafna was sprawled all over my armchair, which had become an extended couch, and at the end of the room was a stroller with a newborn in it. When they asked, I told them that Dani had left her daughter with me and hospitalized herself. I tried to figure that out throughout the entire dream. Where did the baby come from? How did Dani suddenly get a baby? I woke up feeling uneasy. Maybe Miko, whom I’d left at Yulia’s in order to go to Emily, was this child of hers? Hey, I told myself, you left Yotam there too. Calm down.

I wished that Miko was the abandoned one. Deep down, I knew the truth. It was Dani, and it didn’t matter that she was hospitalized. She’d left a part of herself with me, a very young and needy part, and I went off somewhere that didn’t allow phones. Even when I traveled abroad, I left her with the overriding code for my call-screening so that she could get through to me.

I went out for another long day of practicing. I sat in my spot on cushion No. 12. Yehuda spoke. “Good morning. Today we will further sharpen our consciousness skills.”

We remained beneath the nostrils and above the upper lip. Yehuda cautioned us about yearning. “Be pleased by what is happening right now.” After sharpening our skills, we broadened our observation onto our entire body. Not to react to anything, whether pleasant or irritating − all sensations are temporary and everything changes. Simply observe. Nothing is eternal. Every feeling eventually passes, appears and vanishes. In order to break the habit, we must reach the depths of our souls and heal ourselves from the roots up. Longing and postponing. Sensations appear all the time. Pleasant . . . unpleasant . . . Repeatedly scanning the body, from head to toe and back up, observing without trying to change anything, or without controlling what comes up. Just observing.

The monster keeps getting closer. I look at it. I know it so well, those dirty black nails threatening to dig into me, the sharp teeth wanting to take a bite of my heart. It always paralyzes me and wraps me in self-pity until I become so heavy and huge that I start to sink down to my own private rock bottom, where I encounter helplessness, all by myself. My brain takes its shoes off, too, and walks around barefoot, cruising a few inches above my head.

I managed to cope with most of the feelings without reacting, but the disconnection continued to loom over me. I and continued observing, until I was gently placed back in my spot and resumed thinking about when lunch would be announced.

“If desire awakens within you, you must observe the sensations arising within the body at that precise moment. You will then discover that desire cannot control you,” Yehuda quoted Goenka.

What did God create on the sixth day? Man. “Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness.” I felt like a new person. All of my neuroses vanished into thin air and I managed to fall asleep easily − well, it was more like I fainted. I woke up before the sun came up and had had no dreams, at least not any disturbing ones that I could recall. I had no craving for sweets, or salty food, and I didn’t feel like I absolutely had to have a pizza. I didn’t try to figure out when the next lunch break would be. Something freed up inside, relaxed. I didn’t even feel like smoking; the mere thought of the smell was revolting. What has become of you, Rotem? What will you do once this is over? How will you enjoy life?

And where has Emily been this whole time? Is she even here? The desire for Emily was the only thing that hadn’t been extinguished.

Where is she? To be perfectly honest − which was all I could be at this point − I’d been certain that we’d meet on my first day and then I’d get out of here straight away, which was probably the only reason I’d dared go for this whole thing in the first place. I thought that I’d meet her and then end this thing. And I committed myself to moral behavior with no self-deceiving. Rule No. 4: No lying.

 

My Own Private Theater

I finally stopped thinking about Emily. They appeared before me one after the other − the desire to control, the anger, the yearning for freedom. No one would tell me what to do, no one would even dare to think about doing it. Each in their turn, rising and falling, appearing and disappearing. And not just Emily, with my rest being disturbed by the proximity to her − the main goal of this trip. Dani, too, and Yotam, and Yochai. All appearing and vanishing. I deposited the book when I arrived, but its words remained within me. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” All of the stories faded, all of the knots unravelled. Only a gentle feeling remained. A vibration of energy.

Yehuda began the day: “And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” The Tree of Knowledge divided the world into the good that you want to