Laughter

There is a kind of laughter that comes only to those who have plumbed the depths of despair, who have done their grief work, and who have learned to live a new way. Looking back clear of the resentment and bitterness, sometimes one can see the absurdity in the creatures we are, and love ourselves in our absurdity.

That laughter can only be had when one is no longer holding on to the past, no longer saying, "It should have been otherwise". It is very different than the laughter of embarrassment when someone too easily exposes their pain, or the laughter that tells us our pain is silly and unworthy of being taken seriously. It is the laughter of the deep experience of knowing ourselves fully and loving ourselves despite what we know.

There is no rushing grief. If a person is still angry/bargaining/despairing, you will not convince them to "look on the bright side". The pain must out, or we will carry it forever. But once it is out, if it is fully out, then joy is once again truly possible.

Swearing off my murderous desire

I have decided to swear off my murderous desires

I no longer want to kill my ego

My ego is not my enemy, not something to be isolated, rejected, destroyed

My ego is a child playing in the sunshine, believing he is the center of the world

Spinning in the wild wind, while the universe spins around him

And what he sees and experiences seems to be all that exists

My ego is full of pride, of love for himself - and since when is self-love a bad thing? Is not he a miracle to be celebrated?

However, like any other child of mine, I need to keep an eye on my ego, making sure he doesn't run into the street or take a knife out of the kitchen drawer to play with

He does not know everything

And he can wreak havoc if I do not watch carefully

Yet I am glad to have him - he is a wonderful and permanent part of me that I can love, as well as care for and guide

So that he can find his place of comfort and belonging in my life

And we can live together in peace

Musings over impermanence

This morning, I woke up to amazement. I found myself in my own bedroom after spending 8 hours wandering around in my dreams to all sorts of strange places; somehow I still wound up at the exact same place where I fell asleep! 

I come downstairs, and Heidi is sitting on the couch, laptop in her lap, just like yesterday. There's this strange continuity of existence that somehow I didn't expect this morning. The possibilities seemed so endless at night, when anything could happen, that it did not seem likely that I would wake up in a world remarkably similar to the one I left.

Furthermore, I realized I am still me (whatever that is)! In a world of impermanence, what explanation is there for being approximately the same person that I was yesterday? Why did I not return as a frog, or an ocean wave?

Part of me is disappointed - of all the people and things I could have been, I am once again constrained to be me. Part of me is comforted - I know what to do in this world, and in this body. I'm used to being me. I will have the same friends and relationships that I had yesterday, and I have the same activities to look forward to or dread.

Most of the time, life seems to move incrementally. Watching the minute hand, I can barely perceive motion. Yet when I am not watching, the hands on the clock can jump suddenly to totally unexpected positions, and I may have to rush out the door.

Can I draw a conclusion from this without cementing my reality into the non-present? Probably not. Conclusions kill. Can I escape my sameness, my continuity? I can always escape into the present moment, and leave behind the apparent reality of my past and future. It seems to be only the present moment that is continually new.

Need to know

I don't need to know if you're non-binary, or you're transitioning, or what people you prefer to sleep with, or what pronoun you want to be called by. I want to know if you can connect with me, and tell me about your uniqueness, and hear about mine.

I don't need to know if you're progressive or conservative or libertarian. I want to know if you can set aside your beliefs long enough to hear and honestly consider another point of view.

I don't want to know if you're discriminated against, or if you are blamed for being privileged. I want to know if you are willing to set aside your hurts and anger long enough to meet me in that place beyond right and wrong.

I don't really care to know about your rights, and how they've been violated. And I don't care to know about the power and rights you've been granted. I want to know if you can step beyond your rights and walk in another person's shoes.

I don't need to know your religion, or whose god you worship, or what practices you follow. I want to know if you believe in kindness and honesty.

I don't need to know how rich you are, or how poor you are. I want to know if you can acknowledge your position in life without guilt or blame and still connect to your fellow human.

I don't care what protests you have been to, or how many times you have written your congressman. I want to know if you can see past the stories our minds create, that keep us separate and angry, and reach out to the heart in each human.

I don't want to know what sins you have committed, or how sorry you are. I want to know if you have learned to forgive yourself for everything, if you have learned to live with your faults, and if you have learned to extend mercy to those around you.

I don't want to know what boundaries you have drawn, and why you shut others out of your life. I want to know if you can connect with me, if you can be honest about your fears and weakness and shame. I want to know if you can let yourself be seen by another.

(inspired by Oriah Mountain Dreamer's "Invitation")

Adamancy and Empathy

When a person becomes opinionated, they tend to lose empathy for the concerns of the opposing viewpoint. It is as if in their mind, they have decided their concerns are important enough that they can ignore the concerns of the other side. Thus, pro-choicers are concerned about government interference in our private lives more than the theoretical personhood of a fetus, and pro-lifers are more concerned with respect for human life than the vague threat of government outlawing actions based on personal conviction.

It seems clear to me that both concerns are valid, and that both sides will acknowledge that both concerns are valid - but in our rush for power, we deem it necessary to ignore one concern in favor of the other. We see adamancy and simplistic slogans as the path to victory - that without being a hard-liner, we will not be perceived as strong, and therefore will not win. This is a philosophy based on winning (and forcing a vast number of people to lose and be deprived of what they want), rather than cooperation and understanding.

Unfortunately, we have a president today focused on winning rather than on cooperation, on a certain subset winning rather than everyone winning, so the problem is exacerbated. However, I think that is a symptom rather than the problem. Long before the election, we showed the signs of moving towards more towards conflict and war than towards understanding and compromise.

What is the cause of this? Is there not a ton of evidence against the efficacy of conflict? Is there truly a greater tendency towards polarization and intolerance today than earlier, or has it always been this way?

Spiritual Beliefs

A good friend recently told me some of her philosophy about spiritual beliefs. Basically, she believes that spiritual beliefs are not true or false, they are not even attempts to accurately describe reality - they are about influencing our lives for the better - that "pretending" (my word) something is true causes us to live differently, and if that difference is a good thing, that makes the belief useful, not true.

So if I take on the popular belief that we chose the life we were going to live before we were born, and chose to forget that knowledge, so we could learn the lessons of life - well, that belief has certain effects on how we live our lives, and in particular how we handle traumas or disasters - we no longer see ourselves as victims; it is the choice we made to go through things like this. I personally cannot accept this belief as true, and it angers me to think someone would believe I chose the abuse I went through as a child, but I can see the positive change in attitude that can be wrought by looking at life through this lens, and that could certainly be useful.

What a relief not to have to decide if a belief is literally true or not! Instead, I can look at how I can imagine the world in a way that enhances how I want to live life.

Letting Go of Being in Control

Flying back from my annual trip to the Free Spirit Gathering on the East Coast, I had an insight. At one point, we were making a descent towards the airport, and I was going through my usual anxiety fantasy of spinning and crashing out of control. Suddenly, it came to me - when I stepped into that plane, I had effectively committed my entire life and well-being for the next three hours to this piece of machinery, and the people who controlled it. The moment we took off, my fate was completely and irrevocably determined, and there was absolutely nothing I could do now to change it. It was pretty silly now to tense up as if I could stop a crash from taking place. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and I had made an unconscious decision three hours before to let it happen, even if it meant a fiery crash.

My stomach eased up as I watched my fate play out, and we landed without incident. I thought to myself, if I had been fully conscious, I could have been aware that I was sealing my fate the moment I stepped onto that plane, and perhaps I wouldn't have suffered the anxiety of thinking I was still in control.

And then my mind went one step further. In a sense, our fate is sealed the moment we are born. True, there are many moments throughout life where I can make choices that have real consequences, but when I stepped onto this earth for the first time, I was going to have to live a human life with all of its glories and tragedies, for an unspecified period of time, whether I liked it or not. Most of my life has been without my choice or consent, and in that sense, my fate is sealed. It is absurd to pretend I'm in control beyond the small amount of life I can actually affect.

I can relax.

Abandoning the label Liberal

I think I am going to abandon the label "liberal". There are too many things going on under that name that are totally against my values, just as much of what I find on the conservative side is against my values. We are seeing the rise of an "alt-left" movement, militant, violent, and authoritarian, trying to dictate how everyone else should be.

I believe in treating all people with kindness, and that is how I want to be treated. I am anti-one-side-ist. I want all people to respect each other's needs, and be able to listen to each other and walk a mile in their shoes before we judge.

This is not naive idealism. "Oneness" is hard work, very hard work. It is difficult to put your own cherished beliefs aside long enough to understand why someone believes things that you find abhorrent. And once you find common ground in your beliefs, it is still very difficult to find a solution that we can all live with. But what alternative is there, other than suppressing the freedom of all you disagree with, so that you can have power to make the world the way you want? How many good meaning folk have started out to better the world, and wound up being the problem instead of the solution?

I passionately believe this can be done. Any successful relationship has gone through the phases of disagreeing, trying to change the other side, seeing them as wrong and you as right, having to look inside and recognize your own shadow, and learning how to reconcile and compromise so you can build a life of love together. The same must be done politically between warring factions. Society is made up of individuals, and ultimately we have to deal with our shadow side if we want healing in our nation and in the world.

Portland Protests

On my mind this morning are the protests here in Portland that took place on Sunday. People shouting slogans back and forth at each other, taunting, teasing, insulting, bullying.

I felt incredibly sad watching them, opposite sides of a street, bullhorns blaring, police keeping the crowds apart. Like children, taking sides, pretending their team is somehow superior. There was absolutely no possibility of heart-connection, of the two sides developing an understanding and a warmth between them. I do not doubt each side left with a deeper conviction of how right they are.

It is so obvious to me that gun control, or immigration, or Trump, or Russia, is not the issue. The issue, huge and bleeding right in front of us, is our inability to hear each other. We ignore the legitimate fears and needs of the other side, because our side is too filled with our own fears and angers to have the capacity to notice any concerns but our own. Our minds are poorly designed when it comes to seeing clearly that we are all in the same boat, that we rise or fall together, and that we as a whole must be understood and cared for, rather than splitting off some part of us and condemning it.

The crowds egg each other on, building up the beastly energy to the point where we totally lose our ability to see the humanity across the street from us, and they become stupid, ignorant, or worse, immoral, evil, to be shunned or destroyed. They are a part of us! We destroy a part of ourselves when we destroy an opposing side, and we will be a one-sided cripple if we succeed. We need both sides, or else critical elements will be lost and we will be blind to certain dangers the other side saw clearly.

Trump is not the problem. Society is not the problem. "They" are not the problem - not the real problem. The problem is the disowned parts of ourselves that we project outwards onto others, and then try to pummel, mock, berate, or eliminate. We are so numb that we do not feel the pain of the side we are destroying - the desperateness, the sense of injustice, the sense of not being cared about in the side we are choosing to reject. It is as if one part of our body has become numb to us, and the other part is trying to burn it off.

The trick is to deal with the deep pain that comes from becoming conscious of how we treat the other side, without then turning around and berating ourselves for the cruelty we have inflicted. That only splits off another part of ourselves for us to berate, and we repeat the abuse. The trick is bravely feeling the pain that comes with consciousness - to stop being numb to the hurts and fears of those we have ignored, and to step into compassion. Yes, there are real world issues to be decided on, and they are not simple - but no healthy solutions will be found if built by this brutal part of us that is focused on self-protection rather than compassion.

True solutions can only come from an integrated society that has compassion for all of its people. Any solution that only satisfies a portion of the people will forever deal with the portion that is not sufficiently heard and considered. They will rise again, as we have seen, because our insistence to get our needs met is paramount to our existence. It is the stuff of life that causes us to be here.

Separation, as it has been said time and time again, is illusion - interconnectedness is the reality. Our illusions only perpetuate our pain and our destructiveness. Interconnectedness is not easy or simple - we need to get our "big boy pants" on, and do the hard work of connecting with others - of learning compassion and empathy while not losing our own vision and truth. We need each other. And it's not easy opening to someone who seems so opposite to us. It takes a lot of looking past the outward appearance to the heart underneath.

Blind Spots

Blind Spots

It amazes me

that some of the wisest people I know

have blind spots

blatantly obvious to others

and when I claim to know better

because I see their blindness

I am humbled to remember

that I share the same fate

depth 

does not imply 

perfection

Feeling Full

My life feels pretty full today - good relationship, good friends, lovers, music, dance, hot tub, gatherings of good people in my home. But there's room for more, so, life, don't stop now - I ain't done with you yet!

Someday

Someday

Someday I may toss you carelessly aside

like wilted flowers

or the wind, to my dismay, may whisk you away unexpectedly

like a thought not yet completed

but for now, Life, you are in my grasp

and I will not let go.

A Woman Wants Me

A Woman Wants Me

I am on fire today

because a woman wants me

Ridiculous! Absurd! That my self-esteem 

should be so dependent upon someone desiring me

simply because they have different body parts than I do

Yet that's the way it is

I am a man

And there are women attracted to me

because my body and my passions

have enough difference from theirs

to create mystery, draw desire

I am male

And despite all the things I could be ashamed of

because of the gender to which I belong

Today I stand tall and proud

For who I am and the energy residing in my body

fills me with life, and makes me bold

My mother's disappointment

when she first looked down on me

caused her to miss the opportunity

to get to know a boy deeply, in his boyhood

growing to be a man

Not like the men she knew

but someone that could understand a woman's heart

as well as his own

someone who could be powerful

yet compassionate

Today I stand in my maleness

erect, tall, proud

yet remembering the softness 

from whence I came