Sunday, April 29, 2007

The Chicken or the Egg?

I've had it all backwards. I have been examining every single inch of the chicken, knowing each feather by name, every part of its head and body, investigated the most minute aspects of its being.

But I know nothing about the egg. I forgot about it entirely. Which does come first? The chicken or the egg? In this case, I think it matters. I know how things have emerged in my life, my thoughts and feelings and words and actions. But I was missing a fundamental element about what shaped all of this.

My own mind had completely sealed away a certain kind of knowing. The self-protective mechanism of human beings is astounding. What we admit into our awareness and more importantly, what we don't.

Amazing what we have created to keep ourselves protected, numb, distanced, immunized, quarantined, distracted and generally capable of coping with things we have no real ability to cope with at all.

It's not true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Maybe it doesn't kill you, but it maims and cripples and wounds you in all the softest spots. It's not necessarily fatal, but getting to the place where you're actually stronger? That requires tremendous work and at least some element of grace.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The Fortress of Safety

I will assume George W. Bush is a bit like me. Which is to say that when I'm feeling insecure or threatened or uncomfortable, my fear shows up in defensiveness. So I'm guessing that's why he seems so unaccountably belligerent all the time - 'cause he's scared and doesn't want anyone to know. I know the feeling. But I hope George can learn the same thing I'm discovering.

That most of us are scared about something at some point, and the perfect antidote is to simply acknowledge it and keep moving. And to whatever degree possible, to keep reaching out beyond the wall of fear that is so tempting to hide behind.

My amazingly unoriginal approach is to breathe deeply, slow down my thoughts, and try to keep communicating and connecting to whatever degree I can. It's not hard to disappear behind a wall of fear. And it feels safe. But it's so isolating and empty. It's a bad trade-off...feeling safe, but in complete isolation.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Ordinary People


Most of us are the most ordinary kind of folks. I didn't quite realize that. I think we have some notion that whoever is the object of our affection or desire has some special powers, but they have no special superhuman powers that I can see. We're pretty much all the same.

I was asking a co-worker today if he like the color of my new mustard yellow purse. He said he really couldn't offer an opinion, as purses weren't really something he had strong feelings about. He said jokingly that it wasn't one of his fetishes. So I asked what was, and he said the list of what wasn't a fetish was ever-so-much shorter than the list of what was. And then I said it didn't matter what fetish he had, he's never be alone since there was a website for it - them. Whatever it/they were, there'd be a website for it somewhere.

'Cause these days, no matter how weird or freaky or eccentric you think you are, there's already someone out there whose built a website to cater to it. So the world is bigger and bigger and more and more anonymous, and it means that your most hidden, secret, intimately private personal hunger has been felt and expressed by someone else. Which means that you never have to feel alone. Even if fulfilling your desires on-line isolates you from relationship with the 3D world around you.

Check out the on-line world. Dating sites - where everyone is honest, romantic, sensitive, funny, intelligent... Or porn, where everyone's body parts exist to satisfy someone else's desires. And they all run together pretty soon in their sameness and where the stuff that's supposed to be precious feels like just another commodity, a shopping list of what you can pick and chose from to meet your specific needs.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The Absolutely Authentic Self

I'm digging the whole exploration of the absolutely authentic self. No more fantasy brightening the shadows, filling in the cracks, making things better than they really are. It's a bit scary actually, not making any excuses or manipulating reality with a philosophical perspective. But it's a necessity for whatever comes next. Whatever that is....

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

I Feel Bad

I feel bad at the moment ~ very bad. My head feels like it's going to explode, and nothing else feels right either. My heart hurts in every way it can, and I'm exhausted. So I just feel bad. Which is the very understandable accumulation of trying to accommodate feeling bad about so many things in so many ways for so long, and just having no more capacity for it.

I cannot handle any more stress, any more tension, any more confusion. I have reached the end of being able to do it. I have made myself as big as I can, trying to create enough space for everything, but there isn't any space for any of it. I am at absolute zero.

I'm not going to try to think my way through any of this. I'm not going to try to make sense of how I got here and why. I am here, and if there's a next step, and will figure it out as I go. What I know is how I feel, and that's what I've ignored more than anything. So for now, I'm just going to pay attention to how I feel and what I want to do with that, and not another thing else.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

In My Dream

In my dream, I'm lying on my back, comfortably nestled in the cool grass, fingers and toes burrowed in nature's carpet beneath me, kissed by the sun, caressed by the gentle breeze. And as I lay there suffused with delight, all the bits of heaviness and worry in my head and heart crawl away from me like the annoying bugs they've been.

Through the few clouds hanging in the sky, I see a big, beautiful bird appear magically overhead, floating down on soft, strong wings, so quietly that I hardly notice it until it's upon me. And with such grace, such elegance, such natural perfection and confidence, it begins to feed on the little bugs, nibbling away at them until every last one is gone.

These annoying little insects, the remnants of all my sorrows, have become food for this glorious creature, and I have been freed from their presence. They have left me and become something useful ~ finally.

With no more worry on my mind, I lie back, relaxing deeply and completely into myself, and the bird does the same next to me. Every cell in our bodies relaxes into quiet contentment, both of us feeling full, complete, sated, and satisfied.

Signs

I spoke with a woman I don't know for over an hour the other day. She is trying to figure out the next step in her life, and someone suggested she talk with me. She is trying to decide what's next - trying to find the right signs to point her in the right direction.

I told her I don't know if I really believe in signs. 'Cause to believe in signs means to believe that there's a "right" answer that G*d or the universe or whatever you think is at work here, has decided for you, and your job then is to put together puzzle pieces to figure it out. That the "right" answer already exists, and you have to suss it out.

But that means the future has been chosen for you. Which I don't believe. We choose our future with every though, word and action we take and make. I think G*d or the universe (or whatever you want to insert here) is unconditionally loving. And will love you no matter what choice you make. And signs are just the things we use to give external credence to a choice we want to make, but need back-up to justify.

You can find a sign to support anything you want to do or not do. But mostly it's just a matter of choice. And sometimes you make choices that look good for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes you make choices that don't, and you have to deal with all of that, and I think that's just fine. Either way.

'Cause signs aren't magical talismans that prevent anything bad from ever happening. You can find 10,000 signs to tell you you're moving in the right direction, and there still might be difficulty in that choice. Magical thinking doesn't protect us. It doesn't change us. And it doesn't change the world to somehow keep us safe from sorrow.

'Cause what we have to confront ultimately is the sorrow that lives inside of us, and there's no sign that protects us from our own creation, from the mistakes and misunderstandings and mixed up way we've come to be. And there's no shortcut around dealing with it, going through it, and facing up to who you've become.

I know this with the authority of experience. Even G*d's protection doesn't protect you against your own creation. Otherwise the world would look like a "My Little Pony" playground, full of rainbows and ponies and fairies and butterflies and happiness all around. But it doesn't look like that. And there's no escape dealing with ourselves, except for whatever temporary distractions we find to escape into, which so often end up entombing us in the very sorrow we were trying to escape to begin with.

And all of this soul searching, sorting through, sorting out, transformation, etc., continues to feel brutally humiliating as I notice ever more subtle nuances about the complication of my own emotional nature. And even worse, how that complication has vomited up the worst of who I am into relationships and choices and left its stink and stain all over my life.

This is what I knew about myself a long time ago, that made me search so desperately for a place of complete purity, peace and safety. I needed a place free of my own sickness, and free of the sickness of others. I was at the point in my many lifetimes where I had no resources left to combat sickness, where I needed quarantine, for my own benefit and the benefit of those around me.

Fortunately, I'm better. I'm so much better. But I don't know if I'm well yet. I don't know if I'm robustly healthy. I know better than to think I suddenly don't need what restored me to at least this much health. The spiritual nourishment, the emotional sustenance, the deeper understanding, the pure love, G*d's arms wrapped around me in unending peace, complete acceptance.

We never stop needing the life-giving, health-giving stuff...not ever. But I don't need the complete isolation of quarantine. It's time to get sun on my face, feel the breeze on my skin. enjoy life and myself again. Not to throw myself out there carelessly, forgetting everything I've discovered, but certainly happily. And a bit more all the time.

Electrifying

I got chills, they're multiplyin', and I'm losin' control
Cause the power you're supplyin', it's electrifyin'


"You're the One That I Want" (Grease soundtrack)


I know that feeling - electrifying. It's the feeling that has always got my attention when nothing else did. It's the feeling that makes me pay attention when I am otherwise completely indifferent. The upside is the powerful, electrifying sense of being completely alive, plugged into an energy so enlivening that you don't want to step away from it for a moment.

The downside is what happens when you've been electrified. The downside is the emotional overload, the confusion, the overwhelmed senses, the emotional chaos, the feeling out of control, the losing yourself, the fast-beating heart, the sleeplessness, the distraction...

The only kind of love that I've noticed is the kind that's been electrifying. It's gotten my attention by spinning my head around and making everything else disappear. But if you've been on the receiving end of anything actually electrifying, you know how uncomfortable, even painful, the shock of it can be.

Electrifying doesn't feel very good. Maybe the initial jolt of energy brings you back to life, but after that? It just doesn't feel very good. I'm finding room inside myself, quite literally, for what feels good. Making room energetically for comfort and belonging and happiness and love and acceptance and easiness. I don't know that electrifying has a place anymore. It's caused too much pain, too much dis-ease, too much chaos, and I don't have room for that anymore.


Cloud Burst

There is some deep sorrow hidden away still inside, underneath and below and mostly invisible except in the way that it still informs my thinking and feeling and decisions. It's a shadow, a dark cloud threatening to burst at any moment. And I spend a lot of time trying to avoid that. So much I don't say, so much I don't talk about, so much no one ever hears 'cause I'm trying to avoid that. But I have to own it, embrace it, hold it close to me and stop keeping it at a far reach.

I don't have to be better. I don't have to be different. I don't have to change. I don't have to prove myself to anyone. I can stay right where I am for just as long as I want and need. I can move forward or backward or not move at all, and all of those are just fine. I can choose to do whatever I want or not make any choices at all.

The force I keep using against myself, no matter how well intentioned, is hurting me. It's undermining my physical, emotional, spiritual and mental well-being, and there is just no one or nothing that makes pushing so hard worth doing.

I don't need to move ahead. I can. I might. It's absolutely up to me. But this is my story, being written second-by-second, and no one's good intentions or hopes or wishes is more important than my own sense of things, my own timing, my own rhythm, my own narrative.