is no secret at all, i'm sure. the secret is simply to be open. i am reading a book right now co-written by the dalai lama, and his contention is that his openness is what allows him to be happy. could it really be so simple? of course it could. but simple is rarely easy.
one is rarely more open to attack than when open to another person. if your arms are spread wide for a hug, you are never more vulnerable to a blow to the stomach or a kick to the groin. but without that openness, you are also never open to the hug you seek. and it is as simple as being strong enough to be willing to weather the blows in order to allow for the hug. we reap what we sow in all regards, but i feel it is most especially true in this one.
the fear? becoming overwhelmed. i am exhausted with myself right now. i have but dipped my toe into the waters of own emotions, and i already fear the overwhelming nature of what lies under the still surface. there is an undertow to the human soul that can become so strong to drag one down, and i am afraid of that, but i have already been there. i no longer am cripplingly afraid of my own dark side. but the light - i am also afraid of the light.
if i open myself, are those blows too strong? i have been battered about by winds of feeling already, opening myself little bits across the years, and what lies inside me is strong, so strong i fear my ability to control it. i can feel inside me something that wants out; it is not malevolent or bad, but just strong. i fear it's wanting out, because i feel like it may be a dog off the leash at a park, an openness that leaves me unable to protect myself or hold myself together.
which is nothing to fear at all. what have i to protect? in many ways i am only a shell anyway, the result of shutting myself off from the world for so long. and so why should i not let myself make that opening? all it will take is one small crack, and everything inside me can come pouring out, a torrent of beauty spilling out onto the floor and climbing the walls and radiating outward from me into my surroundings and over everything i can see. i can build a beautiful outlook that will make all the difference in the world for me, and maybe just all the difference in the world. i am finding over nights and through the relentless barrage of images and stories that my mind generates that i want to pour myself out, but i am afraid of losing myself in that process.
but isn't that what it's all about? isn't it about losing one's self to allow one's self to become what it is meant to be? if i can give up that control, the things i see will no longer be threats, but loving opportunity. that which i have will become no longer responsibility but gratefulness, that which i do not have will no longer be resentment but only that which i do not have, and at the most hope, but no longer regret.
i feel this morning like i have spent too long curled in a ball, tossed about while floating disagreeably on the waves of this ocean, allowing myself to be thrown about by waves and baked in sun. i feel like it is time to open that ball, allow myself to drown and become part of this ocean, moving into the newness that is what life is meant to be: all one, all together, open and free and connected. no longer fearing those brushes at my own edges, but feeling those brushes and embracing them.
i am afraid of this. i do not know how to do it. but i want to figure it out. can i do it slowly, opening a small crack and letting myself trickle out? or is the secret that i must dash the wall and let the torrent flow forth? must the opening be complete first in order to function? only time will tell. but it is time to tell. baby steps are what i have. they may not be enough as yet, but they are what i can take. i must take them.
17.2.09
11.2.09
lines
i wonder what it is that we find so attractive about the straight and narrow, the black and white. is it comfortable for some reason to deny that there is not more than varying shades of gray and infinitely curved and twisted shapes? why on earth must we fight the very nature that spawned us?
one need only look out the window to see the flaw in our design. man plans; god laughs. we tame and whip natural form, attempting to straighten and simplify things, codifying the complex and lyrical shapes of nature into ever-simpler volumes of boxes and spheres and triangles, every surface smooth, every edge razor sharp and perfectly defined. and for how long does it work? not very, when the grand scheme is seen.
a tree has no lines, a river no planes. there is no smoothness to a field, no mathematically simple perfection to a flower's petals. the world that was given to us cannot be tamed, but must be live with in accord. we section off pieces of the land with attempts at straight line fences to guard our boxes; mother nature blows them down and tears off our roofs. certainly, she tears down her own trees as well, but this is all part of how it works for her. she builds, she destroys. we build, she destroys. and yet we fight her and try to tell her that mean paternal rationality and logical progression are her masters. she has yet to lose.
i believe we are killing ourselves, evolving ourselves into irrelevance with our need for straight. nature abhors an absolute, and yet we attempt them. we build religions of absolutes, laws without subtlety, societies of relentless 'progress' and consumption. we manufacture new imaginary boundaries to define 'us' and 'them', more lines that exist nowhere but on sheets of paper just so we are able to say 'this is mine' keep out'. there is no wisdom in tilting at windmills - though romantic, it will eventually lead to ruin.
why can we not allow nature to take her courses? why must we always seek to understand? what is it within us that causes us to be unable simply to allow something to be what it is without the need to reshape it or somehow attempt to improve upon its form so that it becomes more useful to us? there is beauty in the bohemian, the poetic and swirling and curving and notched and twisted and decaying and fuzzy and gray.
i find comfort in the black and white, but it is a comfort that has never sat well with me. i blanch at the yoke of rationality that i put on myself. i see the pattern in my numbers, recognize the theoretical beauty of a straight line and a right angle. but they feel wrong somehow. when i let myself stop thinking, my inner landscape swirls and twirls, it odes not follow linear progressions of logical step and logical step.
there is wisdom in the stream of consciousness. there is beauty in allowing what is to be. the twists and turns that life throws at us are nothing more than the natural order; they are not obstacles, but simply the next turns or twists. the mind of god is very likely not a giant computer, crunching numbers and logically spitting out causes and effects, but a chaotic and self-organized system of unexplainable mystery, wheels within wheels in spiral arrays that have an order far beyond a pattern we will ever grasp. it is like wind: we know what it is and what its effects are, we know the mechanisms that create wind, but we will never really understand the how and the why. every discovery leads to another mystery. the one answer is never found, and if it ever were it would likely be a very unsatisfying 42.
and therein lies the beautiful joke douglas adams gave us. thousands of years spent crunching the numbers and the great computer responds with the final answer to life, the universe, and everything in it being 42. we will toil relentlessly to find the answer, but when we get it we won't like it. we're not supposed to. we're not built for that. we're part of nature, not its overlords. this is our charge, not our command, and we are not wiser than the mind which set it up.
one need only look out the window to see the flaw in our design. man plans; god laughs. we tame and whip natural form, attempting to straighten and simplify things, codifying the complex and lyrical shapes of nature into ever-simpler volumes of boxes and spheres and triangles, every surface smooth, every edge razor sharp and perfectly defined. and for how long does it work? not very, when the grand scheme is seen.
a tree has no lines, a river no planes. there is no smoothness to a field, no mathematically simple perfection to a flower's petals. the world that was given to us cannot be tamed, but must be live with in accord. we section off pieces of the land with attempts at straight line fences to guard our boxes; mother nature blows them down and tears off our roofs. certainly, she tears down her own trees as well, but this is all part of how it works for her. she builds, she destroys. we build, she destroys. and yet we fight her and try to tell her that mean paternal rationality and logical progression are her masters. she has yet to lose.
i believe we are killing ourselves, evolving ourselves into irrelevance with our need for straight. nature abhors an absolute, and yet we attempt them. we build religions of absolutes, laws without subtlety, societies of relentless 'progress' and consumption. we manufacture new imaginary boundaries to define 'us' and 'them', more lines that exist nowhere but on sheets of paper just so we are able to say 'this is mine' keep out'. there is no wisdom in tilting at windmills - though romantic, it will eventually lead to ruin.
why can we not allow nature to take her courses? why must we always seek to understand? what is it within us that causes us to be unable simply to allow something to be what it is without the need to reshape it or somehow attempt to improve upon its form so that it becomes more useful to us? there is beauty in the bohemian, the poetic and swirling and curving and notched and twisted and decaying and fuzzy and gray.
i find comfort in the black and white, but it is a comfort that has never sat well with me. i blanch at the yoke of rationality that i put on myself. i see the pattern in my numbers, recognize the theoretical beauty of a straight line and a right angle. but they feel wrong somehow. when i let myself stop thinking, my inner landscape swirls and twirls, it odes not follow linear progressions of logical step and logical step.
there is wisdom in the stream of consciousness. there is beauty in allowing what is to be. the twists and turns that life throws at us are nothing more than the natural order; they are not obstacles, but simply the next turns or twists. the mind of god is very likely not a giant computer, crunching numbers and logically spitting out causes and effects, but a chaotic and self-organized system of unexplainable mystery, wheels within wheels in spiral arrays that have an order far beyond a pattern we will ever grasp. it is like wind: we know what it is and what its effects are, we know the mechanisms that create wind, but we will never really understand the how and the why. every discovery leads to another mystery. the one answer is never found, and if it ever were it would likely be a very unsatisfying 42.
and therein lies the beautiful joke douglas adams gave us. thousands of years spent crunching the numbers and the great computer responds with the final answer to life, the universe, and everything in it being 42. we will toil relentlessly to find the answer, but when we get it we won't like it. we're not supposed to. we're not built for that. we're part of nature, not its overlords. this is our charge, not our command, and we are not wiser than the mind which set it up.
a new set of rules
essentially, i am going to force myself to let things be. when i write, i am going to try to leave what i write without revising ten ways to sunday. i realize not everything up here is perfect, that there are still mistakes and flaws and problems in every post on here. but i have come to a place where i need to start teaching myself to accept those flaws, to learn that everything will never be perfect no matter how hard i try. there will always be a mistake, a flaw, a problem. there will alwys be an awkward turn of phrase, a word left out, a clumsy metaphor. but it is time to let those things be for a while.
my writing may always have come across as off-the-cuff, as though i woke up and spit it out without ever giving it a second thought. that is far from the case. nearly everything here has been rethought, rewritten and revised. i am going to stop that for now. this may result in a precipitous drop in the quality of what is written, but i am forcing myself to be ok with that.
my writing may always have come across as off-the-cuff, as though i woke up and spit it out without ever giving it a second thought. that is far from the case. nearly everything here has been rethought, rewritten and revised. i am going to stop that for now. this may result in a precipitous drop in the quality of what is written, but i am forcing myself to be ok with that.
10.2.09
selfishness
very briefly for today: where does care for self end and selfishness begin? i am hearing left and right about honoring myself and what i need and what i want, and making sure that i am not making my desires subservient to those of others. i must be willing to say no when others want me to do something that is in conflict with my own wants. bear in mind that i understand this whole dynamic changes when those 'want's are changed to 'need's. wants will very frequently be subsumed by needs.
but essentially, i have so very rarely put myself first that i have no idea how to strike the balance when things get gray, when that line is blurred. i have been trying very hard to determine what some of my needs and wants are, and now that i find some of them in conflict with those of others the pendulum is swinging back toward where i always have been. if i have this want, but everyone else has an opposing want, does not the greater number rule? do i really deserve to have what i want, or am i simply being selfish?
simply put, i don't know. i will continually second-guess my own choices, and i will worry and wonder how my life might have turned out if i had put myself all along, but most of that doesn't matter now. it is in the past. i have now what choices i have made, and i can only build on those with the choices i have yet to make. but how does one do that if one cannot even trust that one is acting with the right interests? where do my choices cease to be my choices? where does my responsibility to myself end and my responsibility to others begin? how do i know when i am being selfish instead of honoring myself?
bugger.
but essentially, i have so very rarely put myself first that i have no idea how to strike the balance when things get gray, when that line is blurred. i have been trying very hard to determine what some of my needs and wants are, and now that i find some of them in conflict with those of others the pendulum is swinging back toward where i always have been. if i have this want, but everyone else has an opposing want, does not the greater number rule? do i really deserve to have what i want, or am i simply being selfish?
simply put, i don't know. i will continually second-guess my own choices, and i will worry and wonder how my life might have turned out if i had put myself all along, but most of that doesn't matter now. it is in the past. i have now what choices i have made, and i can only build on those with the choices i have yet to make. but how does one do that if one cannot even trust that one is acting with the right interests? where do my choices cease to be my choices? where does my responsibility to myself end and my responsibility to others begin? how do i know when i am being selfish instead of honoring myself?
bugger.
2.2.09
equanimity
composure. sangfroid. even-headedness. i am filled with it this morning, and i am not at all impressed.
equanimity is the goal of the buddhist practice. it strikes me as the thing that john the baptist must have cultivated in himself while awaiting his death, what the apostle paul must have settled into while languishing in prison after prison, what mandela must have required to endure and then to forgive. it is what i see in the dalai lama every time he is interviewed, and i have always desired to be in that state.
acceptance. resignation without giving up. a decided lack of passion about one's own circumstance. i don't mean to imply that i am stuck in any sort of prison or anything of the sort. if anything, quite the opposite today. in yesterday morning, upon waking, i found myself making a connection to the world i have not felt in quite some time, if ever. it was not that i looked around and felt that all was love, that i clicked into place and everything around me suddenly made sense, or that every choice i have ever made came rushing back to me in a pregnant moment and i gained great clarity as to how i came to be where i am. nothing so grandiose, i'm afraid, but i did wake on sunday morning with a feeling that i was part of the picture, the really big one.
for a long, long time now i have felt outside of it all, like i had somehow been lifted out of the stream of consciousness the rest of the world swims in and had been left to sit on the shore and watch the fun with muddy feet. it was a feeling of separateness, of aloneness almost - a feeling that i wasn't quite fitting the way i am supposed to, like a puzzle piece that someone has jammed into the wrong space, bent tabs squeezed into a place in which they don't belong, kinked up and image flaking off. it had become not so serious as that perhaps, but rather than feeling jammed in it had come to the point where i had pulled myself out of the space altogether and rested on the picture wondering where my place even was. i don't know that i have truly wedged myself back in yet, but i at least recognized yesterday that i have tabs and divots, that there is indeed a spot for me to fit in this grand design. i felt like i did have someplace i belonged and was part of the picture. i felt other people like they were peers, not threats.
i ran yesterday, too, for the first time in 2 months or so. i had taken a trot last weekend - just a lazy something to test the legs and see how the felt - but yesterday i ran for real. just a quick 5k, but that was just the thing: it was reasonably quick, under 25 minutes. not bad, and the legs feel pretty good this morning. but i ran. got back to being me for a bit. nice.
and this has all left me with a feeling of equanimity. i have peace, i have some small sense of contentment. i am neither overjoyed nor irritated this morning. i find myself of simple and sound mind with neither thrill nor venom. i just am. i have achieved, to some degree, what i have sought. and it is uncomfortable.
i am not calm. i am not smooth. i have always been in turmoil. i have, for as long as i can remember, been a busy sea, and to have my waves suddenly gone is leaving me a little confused, i think. i am passionate, enthralled, annoyed, roiling and boiling and bubbling and tossed about, rain-spattered and water over the gunwales or racing swiftly under blue skies and over sun-baked simple waves, with the light hot on my back and my attention on the sea in front, waiting for the wave that would bounce me from my joys and thrash me back into stormy waters. to sit still in the doldrums, waves gone and sea of glass beneath me, breezes cool and temperate and soft enough not to disturb my lack of motion, is unfamiliar and not a little disconcerting.
i have come to where i want to be, or at least have found my way into the same country, sharing surroundings with it, and i am finding that this country is so new and so different that it is hard to decide that it is a nice place to stay. i know that i must remain here in the glass-smooth seas of this country, if only to survive the journey, for i know to have lived as long as i have in the surging waters of my own oceans has been sheer luck. my outlook has been severe, my waves sharp and dangerous, and to have made it through them has been as astounding a bit of fortune as this world has seen. and so it is not without great introspection that i say that i feel like a foreigner here in this smooth water. for all of the connection i felt yesterday, for all the part-of-it-allness, the very feeling of composure it begat has created a dis-ease within me through my lack of familiarity with it.
sad, i suppose, that i should get to the point that so many wish to achieve - the connection and acceptance rolled together into a balance that gives peace and calm outlook that can take so long to cultivate - only to be confused that it has stolen my passion. i feel things in great, wide swings, depths and peaks of equal height and depth if not frequency, and this spot in between which we all seek has me wondering what the big deal is. i am fighting for acceptance of my own acceptance, equanimity in the face of my own equanimity. with my passions quelled, this middle ground feels to me to be middling. this could take more work than i thought.
equanimity is the goal of the buddhist practice. it strikes me as the thing that john the baptist must have cultivated in himself while awaiting his death, what the apostle paul must have settled into while languishing in prison after prison, what mandela must have required to endure and then to forgive. it is what i see in the dalai lama every time he is interviewed, and i have always desired to be in that state.
acceptance. resignation without giving up. a decided lack of passion about one's own circumstance. i don't mean to imply that i am stuck in any sort of prison or anything of the sort. if anything, quite the opposite today. in yesterday morning, upon waking, i found myself making a connection to the world i have not felt in quite some time, if ever. it was not that i looked around and felt that all was love, that i clicked into place and everything around me suddenly made sense, or that every choice i have ever made came rushing back to me in a pregnant moment and i gained great clarity as to how i came to be where i am. nothing so grandiose, i'm afraid, but i did wake on sunday morning with a feeling that i was part of the picture, the really big one.
for a long, long time now i have felt outside of it all, like i had somehow been lifted out of the stream of consciousness the rest of the world swims in and had been left to sit on the shore and watch the fun with muddy feet. it was a feeling of separateness, of aloneness almost - a feeling that i wasn't quite fitting the way i am supposed to, like a puzzle piece that someone has jammed into the wrong space, bent tabs squeezed into a place in which they don't belong, kinked up and image flaking off. it had become not so serious as that perhaps, but rather than feeling jammed in it had come to the point where i had pulled myself out of the space altogether and rested on the picture wondering where my place even was. i don't know that i have truly wedged myself back in yet, but i at least recognized yesterday that i have tabs and divots, that there is indeed a spot for me to fit in this grand design. i felt like i did have someplace i belonged and was part of the picture. i felt other people like they were peers, not threats.
i ran yesterday, too, for the first time in 2 months or so. i had taken a trot last weekend - just a lazy something to test the legs and see how the felt - but yesterday i ran for real. just a quick 5k, but that was just the thing: it was reasonably quick, under 25 minutes. not bad, and the legs feel pretty good this morning. but i ran. got back to being me for a bit. nice.
and this has all left me with a feeling of equanimity. i have peace, i have some small sense of contentment. i am neither overjoyed nor irritated this morning. i find myself of simple and sound mind with neither thrill nor venom. i just am. i have achieved, to some degree, what i have sought. and it is uncomfortable.
i am not calm. i am not smooth. i have always been in turmoil. i have, for as long as i can remember, been a busy sea, and to have my waves suddenly gone is leaving me a little confused, i think. i am passionate, enthralled, annoyed, roiling and boiling and bubbling and tossed about, rain-spattered and water over the gunwales or racing swiftly under blue skies and over sun-baked simple waves, with the light hot on my back and my attention on the sea in front, waiting for the wave that would bounce me from my joys and thrash me back into stormy waters. to sit still in the doldrums, waves gone and sea of glass beneath me, breezes cool and temperate and soft enough not to disturb my lack of motion, is unfamiliar and not a little disconcerting.
i have come to where i want to be, or at least have found my way into the same country, sharing surroundings with it, and i am finding that this country is so new and so different that it is hard to decide that it is a nice place to stay. i know that i must remain here in the glass-smooth seas of this country, if only to survive the journey, for i know to have lived as long as i have in the surging waters of my own oceans has been sheer luck. my outlook has been severe, my waves sharp and dangerous, and to have made it through them has been as astounding a bit of fortune as this world has seen. and so it is not without great introspection that i say that i feel like a foreigner here in this smooth water. for all of the connection i felt yesterday, for all the part-of-it-allness, the very feeling of composure it begat has created a dis-ease within me through my lack of familiarity with it.
sad, i suppose, that i should get to the point that so many wish to achieve - the connection and acceptance rolled together into a balance that gives peace and calm outlook that can take so long to cultivate - only to be confused that it has stolen my passion. i feel things in great, wide swings, depths and peaks of equal height and depth if not frequency, and this spot in between which we all seek has me wondering what the big deal is. i am fighting for acceptance of my own acceptance, equanimity in the face of my own equanimity. with my passions quelled, this middle ground feels to me to be middling. this could take more work than i thought.
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