Category: identity

Bubbles & Wings

May 18th, 2019

Today, after a full night of tossing and turning, I felt it… a spark of innocence floating in the air. It seemed very real, yet somehow not of the same universe or substance as the rest. I watched, my inner vision locked in on the hint of the glimmer, as just like the Good Witch’s bubble in The Wizard of Oz, it grew bigger and bigger; there, yet also not touching anything else.

I asked myself, which is the dream? It didn’t feel like an angel I was wrestling with last night, more like the baggage of a thousand lifetimes, but surely I awoke to some kind of gift.. a new opening of mind or sense of liveliness and freedom through which the wonders of life may flow more freely. Or at least, my awareness of them…

Soap Bubbles
downloops.com

When I first began meditating. I met a monk (who was or wasn’t – it doesn’t matter) in a virtual world who, listening to me talk about my spiritual experiences and visions, cautioned me not to become too enamored, a la Narcissus with his reflection. He suggested I instead consider the taste underlying the experiences, and let that taste spread out, permeating into the rest of life.

While I don’t think I missed the point entirely, it would be a long time before I could see that not owning personal experiences, not holding them too tightly would enable growing wings.

However, something else clicked when that feeling of claiming ownership of experiences fell mostly away. Even to tell a simple personal story began to feel pointless or indulgent. I often felt guilty, or like I was lying. My context was way too wide.

Yet, that’s how people converse. It is normal to ask about someone’s past or hopes for the future. Locating one another in time and space seems necessary to further connection.

So it felt for a while as though I’d undergone surgery, but the wrong part had been removed, leaving me unsure how to interact with the world. Thankfully along the way I found other ‘spiritual types’ who felt this way, and more patience to wait for that phase to pass too.

It was then that the insecurities of childhood and fears of adulthood reappeared with brand new ferocity, and wow, such deep feelings of regret. I suppose now that what happened is that I hadn’t had to deal with those fears and inadequacies for a for a while amidst my blissful romance with meditation and spirituality, and was caught off guard to find the wounds still there, still un-healed.

Doesn’t that sound similar to what people describe in romantic relationships? So much can be covered initially, by awe and newness.

I think that’s what the spark of innocence that greeted me this morning means to remind me. That although my field of perception may feel full of the beasts of doubt and fear at times, I can recognize that they aren’t ‘me’ or ‘mine’. That there are muses of clarity, too. Now I want to see and converse with them all, hear the strange and wonderful things they have to say.

Sometimes when I write a post here, something comes up on twitter that speaks so closely to it that I find it hard to leave out. Today it was,

“…to arrive at that beautiful ancient innocence which consists of the ability to plunge into dream…”

-Albert Camus, Youthful Writings; “Essay on Music,” , 1932 – quoted by Rubynola82

What comes to mind too:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi

Advertisement
Character Examinations

May 11th, 2019

Even whittled down into bursts of story, George R.R. Martin’s range as a writer is a wonder to behold, never letting the reader off the hook from intense examining of character motivations, never ceasing to surprise with blind spot connections, and showing that like-it-or-not we coexist with unfathomable contradictions – in ourselves as much as any outside character.

I find myself examining my own life’s story-lines as if written by Martin, which gives me patience with my own “villains” and impossible situations. And I must say, this especially during the show’s last few seasons, where verdicts are coming down, hindsight well in hand. We see some of the we characters we thought of as noble and ‘good’ as sadly ineffectual and even dangerous due to the very values we love so much, for one thing. And we reluctantly love, even forgive, indisputable monsters. George R.R. Martin has said in interviews that he finds the question of redemption especially fascinating. Me, too.

Oh, I’m talking about Game of Thrones, by the way.

My son and I have an ongoing debate. He has a distaste for social justice warrioring, not because he doesn’t care, but because he feels that the only things that ever change anything… anyone in the world, happen not because someone learns them in a straight-forward way, but through such things as, well we might say *art for art’s sake* and one-on-one relationships. To forcefully advocate for a ’cause’ as a central thing, goes against what he believes in, in a way. The closer one can get to being themself, and doing what they do, the more the world at large will also. Or something like that.

I, on the other hand, see it all similarly to learning foundational times tables. I think you have to get some basics down, and then as you work with those basics along with the material of your life, those values/principles/aspirations may find their own avenues of expression. Or they may not. But I don’t think one can afford not to try to move something forward because their effort may be clumsy, or because all they’ve got to work with are blunt instruments. In a nutshell my philosophy is something like Picasso’s line, “Inspiration exists, but it must find you working.”

I agree that it is the sublime that *most* matters, but that doesn’t let us off the hook for the rest.

Yet, I must admit that when I see the process of illumination and natural learning people undergo when parsing and obsessing over these books and shows, I lean my son’s way. I begin to think his way is more realistic about the downsides of measuring what is happening in the world through our filters of concepts, even of compassion (which I do consider the highest ‘value’ available in the world). I have often wielded my sword seemingly driven by such ‘good’ motivations. But then, was I, really? How often am I simply reacting out of un-faced pain? How much damage have I caused at times while trying to do the right thing, to be good, to be worthy in the eyes of someone who isn’t even still there in my part of the grand story …

For now, I can’t decide whether my son is cynical or clear seeing about the political dimensions, but I know that he catches much that I miss, including camera angles and lighting, sound engineering and song choices–not just when we’re watching Game of Thrones. Maybe he is like a mantis shrimp and has more cones than I do, so to speak. 🙂

I wonder how he is seeing this world in this time, which to me has appeared more and more overrun by blatant villains, more empowering to the overtly cruel. I want to believe that by people banding together for the sake of honor and justice it is possible to speed up exposure of what needs to be addressed behind the scenes… that Bengal tigers and rhinos and elephants and wolves might continue roaming the earth, clear waters continue to flow, and all beings be beheld as valuable on multiple levels, rather than just resources to exhaust. Sometimes I do wonder whether my son may be missing my sense of urgency because he may not see how women fear they factor in this question of resources and territory to conquer in times experienced as austere (a measurement itself subjectively imposed).

Well that went in a few directions, not even getting to the contemplative questions I hoped to approach… again. 🙂 So for now I’ll just finish with a photo of Ghost and Jon, just because the dire wolves deserve lots of love and attention as imparting the original vision to George R.R. Martin which became A Song of Ice and Fire, then Game of Thrones.

fanpop.com
The Summer that arrives in Spring

May 5th, 2019

Summer has arrived in Spring, as it always does here in Miami. It is a terrible season in some ways, the sun so intense that I try to time walks in the evenings, even to the mailbox. No doubt though, it is beautiful. For any would-be photographer, the quality of light and the brightness of everything is astounding. On the water, stars glisten well into the evenings… a dance of pure magic.

At least once between now and September, I’ll cover myself in light clothes and powerful sunscreen, don a large ridiculous hat, and risk what I pray will be just a quick dip in health ‘this time’, to capture a little of the show. For a few days I’ll drink more water, eat more vegetables and fruit, take every vitamin, get to bed on time. For a few vivid pictures, I’ll plan to afterward pass through the days of self-judgement when the weakness sets in, try to remember the promise I made to myself, not to panic but to let it pass.

As it does, almost always.

Those without chronic illnesses can’t imagine the wear self-condemnation can entail. One can hide from others, but not those who show up there ‘in the mind’, wearing one’s own face, speaking in one’s own voice. “If you had…” “If you had not…” It was the glass of wine this time, or the sugar, or the garden stroll too early or late in the day. Maybe the unforgiveness … Yet perfection of behavior is never guarantee that the general cycles would not be much the same.

I’ve mostly avoided writing and stories that delve into it as central, just as even when in the most serious times I avoided support groups (although, Life serendipitously brought me into support groups through work, which has been beneficial). Maybe this was foolish. Maybe it would have been wiser to, as Ellen Mains does in her book Buried Rivers, work to integrate it all into the path all along – not editing it out of the internal dialog, allowing the conversation.

“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed… it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.
– Virginia Woolf, found in a completely wonderful and worthwhile post from Brainpickings

I do love the sudden afternoon rains in summer though, especially when occasionally they stretch into hours. The air turns suddenly cool, the edge off the harshness. It feels like permission to breathe, permission not to worry. Whatever I’m ‘supposed to be’ working on to make up for gives way.

I often stop to imagine that the rain is cooling the waters of the Atlantic that begin to boil this time of year, brewing monster storms.

The truth is I’m worrying way too much these days, doubting decisions and feeling ill-equipped. Sometimes all my tools and strategies of positivity – feeding more to the happy wolf – turn on me. “If you’d only do the affirmations…” “If you add more meditation…” “Be more grateful…” All fine and indeed wonderful things to do.

But those are still do-ings rather than knowing nothing is missing, and actions flowing from that. The silver linings really ARE there. ‘Miracles’ do continually occur. Life has never seemed easy, after all, but like the spring-summer setting in all around me now, it has always been astoundingly beautiful.
On flowing through horizons

April 10th, 2019

I let the weekend pass by without writing, too preoccupied to string thoughts together sensibly with the correct measures of thought for others, the big picture, my little self. I’m worried about things: my country, my judgment, our systems of justice, overall stamina to rise to the occasions arising. And of course the just day-to-day.

A woman on twitter wrote that the country seems like an abused spouse to her, walking on eggshells trying to find ways to mitigate the chaos constantly. Her image has stuck in my mind. Simultaneously, I try to seat myself ‘in the light’, so to speak. Without closing my eyes to the above, I find ways to root myself into ‘this very existence’, ‘what is’ through play and loving energy with others, making a celebration out of ‘whatever is right at hand’, be it silly or profound.

A friend with an ill son once said to me that during the times in which he was healthy, their family wasted no moment finding ways to express and celebrate *the life*. Her Jewish ancestors had taught her the wisdom of hesitating not at all.

Which may be part of the reason I’ve been taking refuge in music similarly to when I was young and, feeling caged, thought my life would forever be small. I have hesitated too much in my adult life (my ancestors taught me the opposite – that moving too fast and being reckless will get you into crisis where you will stay and stay for a long time), but the exceptions to that have been times of being so caught up in the flow, especially with others, to an extent that I couldn’t have overridden it if I tried. But why on earth would I have tried? 😉

And… music is flow. So I’ve been getting myself back to the garden playing dozens of small documentaries around the apartment while sorting and working. There are lots easily streamed, among them Jeff Beck, Prince, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, Abba, ELO, and Joni Mitchell.

My oldest ‘child’ is moving away, which keeps hitting me over and over again. I can see her at every stage of life, hear her many voices, remember so much. Trying to wrap my mind around the idea of connecting over the (yuk) phone isn’t working so well. No matter how unzen it may be, sometimes I DO want to go back. But instead must flow with the changes, align with the countless possibilities, appreciate the presence of mental time machines when they spontaneously appear.

This may be burying the lead, but speaking of time machines (ha ha), today the first photo of a black hole was shared with the public. To capture the photo, a fascinating collaboration of telescopes was needed, as were the right conditions. If the black hole had been flaring, no image may have been captured, even with so much preparation.

This is where we are, with all the big puzzles of our time – *more* cooperation is needed, not less.

For those who love words, I’d highly recommend listening to the question and answer segment after the unveiling. Answering a student’s question, Shep Doleman described space time as “flowing through the horizon”, among other wonderful things I’ll spend my day envisioning.

NPR
Beyond belief (systems)

March 30th, 2019

So I’m driving along when it hits me: “Belief systems are effects, not causes; everyone has the wrong end of the stick.”

The paradigm of the last decade or more has been to think in terms of belief systems (programming packages from childhood and current environment), then to examinine, expose, and consciously replace outdated thinking with new. But lately I notice a lot of us giving up on overtly changing others’ thinking by reasoning and argument, aware that thanks to media filters for one thing, we are truly living in entirely separate worlds. Words, even words communicated in the same language, often mean completely different things.

Yes, I do worry that resistance fatigue in itself is part of authoritarianism creeping in.

Perhaps one thing left to do, is go even deeper. When I think about my own belief systems, they often are much more about resonance than something I was convinced of. Or, if I was convinced, I was already drawn into listening. I’m drawn to teachings that feel like good music to me, that affect me energetically. I’m drawn to people who remind me of what I want to be, and be doing… people I feel sparked by. It was a tiny photo of people sitting at a small make-shift desk in an airport, embedded in a random article about deportations, that sent me back to school for paralegal training, for instance.

Beliefs are not irrelevant, but there has always been a sense of not quite hitting the right spot when trying to get at things by working with past traumas and limitations in some logical way. This must be true on a larger scale as well? Things like EFT Tapping and Myofascial Release have shown me how much more effective it is, to go deeper than thinking, then deeper than even ‘patterns of thinking’. Then, the screwy thinking comes up and shows itself and you can deal with it, or say goodbye. 🙂 Meditation has always been about this, but personally I was too disconnected from BODY for a long time.

Anyway, just some thoughts this Saturday morning as I get ready to move my body outside into the uncharacteristically GORGEOUS weather.

>much love<
Protected: Streams and Channels

March 25th, 2019

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:
Force and Movement

March 17th, 2019

I watched the documentary Mr. Gaga today. At first, I watched with the sound off and subtitles on, while listening to a podcast. This is an objectively terrible habit I’ve gotten into, of taking multitasking to absurd and undermining ends, but I thought the film might be atmospheric and give an experimental air to the room.

Wonderfully, however, it was the sort of documentary which won’t stand for that treatment, which makes one want to engage with what is happening on screen, inside of the other lives, as though one’s own. And I did!

Eventually I stood up and shook my body convulsively, turned my limbs in odd directions this way and that. It felt great, though I stopped short of practicing the fascinating falls (you’ll have to see the documentary)!

Image from Stanford University promo

I didn’t know much about Gaga as a dance style, or as a language, as the film suggests. Until taken by friends to see the last Pina Bausch choreographed show Vollmond, I’m embarrassed to say that I knew little of the modern dance world beyond outside of parodies, which always gave the impression of a frivolous world of privilege far far away from my own.

Like many little girls, I had desperately wanted to be a ballerina when young, but it was because I was drawn to the beauty of the sets and movements, the hypnotizing and grand lyricism of it all. In fact, when I was about 13, I followed behind a girl at my church, learning to walk and hold my posture just like hers, pretending that I was also a dancer… a form which stuck and I still haven’t quite broken. I even learned to swing my ponytail like hers, while appearing to hold my head perfectly still.

So I remember feeling confused and overwhelmed after the Pina show, as though my mind had been curled and pushed backwards and all my linear lines of thought thwarted so much that they just wouldn’t work anymore.

Walking out, my sophisticated friends long immersed in the Art World asked what I thought, and I remember trying to compose a sentence or two that might give the impression I understood “the story” at all. I couldn’t. Looking for the story was the story, which was a koan to me.

And because it was a koan to me, for months afterward I felt and dreamed the splashing waters and the whooshing in everything, feeling the force Pina was trying to show, of destruction and resilience, embodying rather than ‘thinking’ about it directly.

Image from dansedanse.ca

This is my sense of things right now… an urgency that has me trying everything under the sun to get out of my head and onto the page, the stage, the whatever-it-takes. I feel like I’m trying to break into my own life, defying convention and my own accepted wisdom to do so.
Golden Moments

March 7th, 2019

I felt restless. The beautiful day was calling me out into the flow of it all, and I needed to clear my head.

We passed each other in the hallway, hesitating to go by. Then turned, at the exact same time, to more politely say, “Hello.”

For five years in this apartment complex she has been one of the only friendly souls toward me, although a few have smiled at and snuggled my dog, and recently I’ve been making more connections. She however, has always smiled at me, has always asked about my day, my plans and thoughts.

Whatever I’ve said, she’s always cheered me on. “I know you’ll do it.”

I guess she can tell that it hasn’t always been easy, that sometimes I feel dragged down by the responsibilities and puzzles I’m juggling (mixed metaphor intentional), but that I’m still ‘showing up’ for life. Perhaps she relates to me, remembering when she first moved to America from another country many years ago. Newly divorced with two sons, she went back to school and became a translator for the court system at just about the age I am now, a job she genuinely loves.

Today, she was wearing a tigers-eye coordinated suit, fancy but not pretentious. I was attuned to the colors because I was about to drive to a small crystal shop that holds weekly yin yoga classes on a “show up and pay” model. I was definitely not fancy, in fact I’d just changed because my daughter had strongly expressed earlier, that I must have gotten dressed with my eyes closed.

Tiger Eye Stone Slab
Sparklegemstoneslab.com

So here’s the heart of this post…

While we were talking, there in the hall of this far too beige apartment building on this gorgeous Florida day, I felt my heart open in an unusual way, and found myself inquiring more deeply about her life and family. She misses her grandchildren lately; though they live nearby, she hasn’t seen them in a month or more. I asked, although I already suspected, that it was a matter with her daughter in law keeping her at a distance. Then I surprised myself to tell her something that I myself hadn’t integrated and *known in full* until sharing it with her.

(Paraphrasing) I said, “When the kids were little, I was very sensitive to feeling like I wasn’t doing a good job. I was hyper-aware of every movement, wanting to do everything perfectly and cover all the bases. Back then, *everything* reflected back at me, my own inadequacies. It has taken more than 20 years to know that was rarely true.”

She relaxed a lot, and started nodding, saying that she really does think her daughter in law is a great mother, and doing everything well. She respects her, although she sometimes gets the impression that her daughter in law feels intimidated by her resourcefulness… that she’s able to sew and cook and learn just about anything she sets out to. She’s isn’t offering help to be critical, it is just her way of things.

“It is really something going on with herself, something she needs to work out,” I said, “but I can tell you that what I really needed was validation.” It is always hard to describe these things, but I had chills during our conversation. I knew that some shift of perspective was possible for both of them, and that things would get better.

I felt better too. I can’t go back in time and speak up for myself, or accept the guidance some of the elder women in my ex’s family tried to give me when much younger. I can’t be the woman I am now, then. Still, it heals a sore spot deeply embedded in my tissues, to suddenly expand in vision that way, so clearly, ‘on the spot’ for the sake of someone else. Sometimes I feel rootless and aimless, but this was a reminder that indeed, we’re all needed in this life, this world, even when finding it hard to affect the seemingly bigger things.

I love that feeling. And actually the little moments are what spark hope that the bigger things can be affected, too.
finishing Harari’s lessons

February 28th, 2019

The Play-as-Being book group is finishing up its reading of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century today. It’s been an interesting ride, but as I write this, I have the feeling that the book is already outdated. Which is scary, because I don’t think enough people are thinking yet about the range of questions he brings to the fore. The only thing I feel sure of (inasmuch as I feel sure of anything), is that he ends the book in the right place, with what individuals can do.

I’m a big big fan of the ‘free will or no free will’ question and discussions that come up around that question within both science and contemplative circles. Free Will belongs to a self that doesn’t exist in the ways our systems tend to program toward, so Harari’s angle is a technological one, drawing attention to the role algorithms have in our lives already, then imagining the directions they are heading in. Importantly noting that they are not heading in these directions on their own, but at the direction of ever more consolidated powers.

He touches on but doesn’t fully address (how could anyone?!) the role of the unexpected in all this. Would any of us have imagined the scenarios we’re in right now, a decade ago? At any second, massive changes can and will occur.

So what CAN individuals do? Harari says, “Get to know yourself as well as ‘they’ do.”

You can tell by my posts perhaps, that this is what I’m working on: meditating more, leaning on and relearning what ‘intuition’ is in light of changes in complexity as a person, but also as a person within a family and friend network, as a member of larger society in my country, and within the world/cosmos.

I don’t have the capacity to mentally encompass all that! Indeed any of those categories when combined with any of the others can shut down my feeling of ‘free will’ about anything and be quite paralyzing! “No wonder that Hindus and Buddhists have focused much of their effort on trying to get out of or off of this wheel (entirely)” says Harari, of fathoming the myriad posited schemes of meaning.

From “The Good Place”
A deceptively ridiculous and timely show about deep ethics and existential questions.

My question is then, how to take it all lightly and keep perspective, while not distracting nor entertaining myself away from the questions or buying into one scheme or another. The PaB group I mentioned above is the closest thing to a community that can embrace so many contradictions that I’ve ever come near, yet Life seems to be kicking me out of that nest too.
exposure, grief & integration

February 22nd, 2019

It began to dawn on me late last year, that I had changed ‘spiritually’ again – that in the way one’s palate develops with age, I had begun to crave new flavors of life, or more sophisticated blends of the flavors I’d been drawn to before.

Vegetable Paella
(Food Network)

As with food, this often means working with contradictory ingredients to discover the new. An intuitive chef begins to know how ingredients are brought forth or subdued by context, and is able to flow with that knowledge to great effect!

That’s the upside. The downside is that it can be super confusing too, and one can make ruinous mistakes. When holding tightly to what one has already learned about what the ingredients mean and are supposed to do, it is hard to be experimental without feeling wasteful.

—– Once, someone threw a surprise party for me. They brought together people from my family, my hometown, then church and work place, to celebrate my, if I remember right, 24th year of life. It is hard to remember right, because I spent the entire evening in a haze, completely overwhelmed by disharmony reflected back at me, suddenly aware of the many selves I’d constructed and the many walled off lives I’d been leading.

Each person seemed to see a different me, and I wanted not to disappoint any of them! Afterward, I actually felt angry at the person who had gone to all the trouble. COULDN’T THEY SEE it would be a disaster? DIDN’T THEY KNOW me at all? Ever since then, I’ve been working on integration.

The truth is, it probably wasn’t a disaster. That sense of things was probably me amplifying every small confusion, which made it seem so. I just didn’t know how to facilitate the connections, or work with the chemistry of the situation to draw out the complimentary and complex flavors. Not in them, and certainly not in myself.

And, far too aware since childhood of undercurrents, I gave the many questions I sensed others asking, too great a spotlight, feeling responsible to answer each one fully in some way.

No wonder I burnt out.

There is a lot to see here, my experience as microcosm, about the dramatic change and sometimes really ugly process that our fragmented society is going through now. Social media (for one) has thrown everything in a big pile for us to sort out, revealing more than we ever wanted to know.

Now our personas beg to be opened up into more dimensions.

Image from JasonBrickhill.com

The hardest part so far? For me it has been accepting that my idols are imperfect (some are even sex offending monsters(!), and that emperors are not always duped. Some are actually proud of having no clothes, and delighted to have so much power they can make humiliated others join their farce.

Some idolize a more compartmentalized time when much more was hidden and controlled, but we can’t go backwards. There are also LOTS of reasons we should not want to.

In some ways I have to recognize fragments of myself out there, reflections of my own valuing and idolizing without question, and not wanting to know more. And I have to wish for their personas to be shattered to themselves as well, so the patterns don’t perpetuate indefinitely. [“me too”]

Kali

In relation to Shiva, she [Kali] appears to play the opposite role from that of Parvati. Parvati calms Shiva, counterbalancing his antisocial or destructive tendencies; she brings him within the sphere of domesticity and with her soft glances urges him to moderate the destructive aspects of his tandava dance. Kali is Shiva’s “other wife,” as it were, provoking him and encouraging him in his mad, antisocial, disruptive habits. It is never Kali who tames Shiva, but Shiva who must calm Kali.^[11]

(Wikipedia), (image: Buddhagarden.com)

I think we have to find some way to recognize the expressions brought forth, without disconnecting from the reality that humanity is hecka-flawed. We have to appreciate what “sparks joy”, and keep a place for it, while exposing the rest. The time between exposure and letting go will be longer than sorting our sock drawers. It is a grief process.

Perhaps there is a next level to things where both the dark and light are held openly with ruthless compassion, rather than pretend forgiveness based on hierarchies (who has the power). If so, I wonder how long it will take us to get there.

Also, why have I been singing “Send in the Clowns”, since yesterday?