Gene's Journal

Integrating Death

2010-08-17T22:18:00.003-04:00

Whenever I think about death, or serious illness, or being disabled, or some other tragedy striking me or someone I love, I feel a lot of distress. Most people would feel distress from these topics, I suppose. Yet it struck me today how odd this is.

We know from a fairly young age that any of these things, and many other tragedies, are possible, and do actually happen, and while the depth is often not driven home until we personally experience it, still there is a reaction that I would consider normal - fear, perhaps, or even anger.

What I discovered in myself, however, was a feeling of shock, as if I really had never believed these things would happen. If I hear of someone who had just gotten the news that they had terminal cancer, it would not merely be sad to me, or stimulate fear - each time it would be like a nasty reality that had rudely invaded whatever set of beliefs I had been carrying.

I am realizing that within my mind, I am busily constructing a story about life and the universe that does not include many of the facts of life - I am constructing a fantasy of how life is, despite my solid knowledge of pieces I now realize I am leaving out. I am systematically ignoring certain facts of life in building my story, so that I am continually shocked when one of these nasty facts hit me in the face.

The oddness of this is that, one would think that we as natural creatures, existing as the current end product of a long line of natural processes, with our intelligence and understanding, would have long ago integrated the basic facts of life into our story; that just as a dog or a bird knows instinctively how to live his life, and how to respond to normal occurrences of life, that we, too, knowing these facts, would have come up with a world view that had so incorporated them that they seem normal, natural parts of life, even if they are not desirable. It seems that healthy creatures who have lived in an environment where death and pain have existed for millions of years, would have somehow learned to integrate those facts into how they live life, and would expect these things to happen. A tragedy would happen, and while we might be sad, we would not be surprised or shocked, or have our world view shaken in any way, or lose our faith, or become full at rage at the universe, if these normal occurrences had truly been known and integrated.

Yet, how many people are totally unprepared for a death or a disability to strike near at hand? How is it that so many of us come out of these experiences shaken, even destroyed? Why is it that we, the most intelligent species on the planet, seem to be the only creature who has difficulty accepting the natural elements of life and death in the environment in which we live; indeed, the only environment we as a species have ever known?

"So, I'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall."

I would like to know life as I would a lover - to know her good and bad sides, to accept her in all of her aspects, so that it is she I truly come to know, and not an illusion.

Confessing and Forgiving All

2010-07-02T07:24:00.004-04:00

When a hurtful incident occurs between friends who want to be reconciled, there will be something left undone if there are motives left unspoken, stories left unsaid, feelings left untouched. Yet sometimes we fear telling the other what really went on inside of us, for fear that will make it worse. We withhold, trying to make it less difficult; and we resent, feeling our pain has not yet been fully heard.

This does not work. Somewhere inside lingers the hidden shadow pieces that we don't want to share, the parts of us we do not love enough to let them be seen; and the connection between us is of necessity weakened, since we must now filter everything we share.

How can an incident ever be truly cleared, if we have not both confessed all, and forgiven all?

Getting Rid of Judgment

2010-05-05T22:09:00.002-04:00

As I went out to lunch from work, I found myself obsessing about getting a good parking place when I came back. I wanted to hurry up with my lunch so that I would beat the majority of the lunch crowd back, and increase my chances of a good place.

Then I caught myself, and started beating up on myself. "Why am I obsessing about a stupid parking place? What's the matter with me? Don't I have anything better to do than worry about if I am going to have to walk a few more feet from the car to the door? God, what a trivial mind I have!", etc., etc

Then another shift happened - I started noticing myself. "Oh, I'm someone who sometimes obsesses about getting a good parking place. I'm someone who occasionally beats himself up because of harsh judgments. Isn't that interesting? I wonder why I do those things?" I found myself now being more curious than angry, and started to muse on the implications of what I had just experienced about myself.

Thinking about this, I realized that when I was judging myself, I was repeating stories from a lot of beliefs I have stored in my brain, ready for moments like this. The beliefs are always the same - they do not vary, and they do not yield easily to evidence to the contrary. But when I started focusing on what was actually happening before me, it became obvious that I hadn't been experiencing myself or my surroundings at all - I was living from a little negative fantasy world about what was happening "out there". When I turned my attention to what was actually happening, I started to notice new things. I was tacitly acknowledging that I did not already know what I would find, that the results were unpredictable, and that they could change at any moment. My experience, not my beliefs, demanded my attention if I wanted to know the truth.

As I mulled over my revelation, I thought about these two ways of relating to the world - judgment and experience. I quickly saw that I preferred experience over judgment for many very practical reasons. Coming from my judgmental stories meant that I was not in touch with the real world, that I was living in fantasy, and that I wouldn't even know it when I was wrong. That could create many embarrassing moments, as well as hinder myself from meeting my own needs. When I focused on experience, I found I was more open to learning new things, to correct beliefs I was carrying, and I felt more alive because my source of information was constantly moving, not static. There was nothing wrong with being judgmental if I wanted - it wouldn't make me a "bad" person for doing so - but living from my experience just made a lot more sense. Judgment was more dumb than bad.

I think that shame comes from believing in judgment. When our focus is on what is, there are no longer shoulds or shouldn't, there is just what is. There is no judgment out there in the world, there are no rights or wrongs, goods or bads; there is only sun, air, trees, people doing what they do, roads in the condition they are in, life behaving like life. All the judgments, shoulds, and shouldn'ts are riding around in the little heads perched on top of our shoulders, and no where else.

This strikes me as a good reason to befriend reality, to connect with what is, to continually take our queues from the continuing experience we are immersed in - in doing so, we can live in a world much bigger and more alive than the world inside our heads.

When to give in

2010-04-26T07:59:00.000-04:00

I have several friends into the Law of Attraction and other philosophies that encourage me to not give in to perceived limitations. Some of my friends insist, "you can do anything if you believe in yourself", and they refuse to put any qualifications on that statement.

My father loved to ride trains. He did it as a hobby, following train routes, going places he had not been before, loving the feel and touch of the engine and rails. As he grew older, he became more and more disabled, and less and less able to pursue his passion. However, he always talked about his next trip and how good it would be. Eventually he was unable to walk, confined to bed, and did not have that long to live. He went farther into fantasy, and would talk about heading to New York tomorrow to catch a train to DC. He refused to accept his limitations, even though the limitations were very real, and independent travel for him was truly no longer possible.

I am not someone who chooses to lie in fantasy. I'm the one who wants to know from the doctor, how long do I have? I'd rather struggle with the truth, even though I don't like it, than live in my own dream world.

But at what point is it healthy to give up one's dreams? When do we face the facts, and realize the chance is gone? I will never win an olympic gold metal. I'll never be the rock star I had once wanted to be. But what about more subtle things? Will I ever conquer my shyness? Should I give up on that goal, and accept myself as I am, or should I continue to try to change myself into the person I wish I was? We all are familiar with the other extreme - limiting ourselves by our negative beliefs, when the truth is that we are far more capable than we believe. But sometimes we truly are not capable, and there is a lot of gray area in between.

The grieving process is now a well-understood and well-documented process, necessary to handle in a healthy way any major loss in our lives. When the loss is a perceived loss of capability, and we cannot really know for sure that we are truly incapable, we can get stuck either in a perpetual striving after something that never comes, or a continual grieving combined with the suspicion that if we had only tried harder, or if we only try harder now, things would change. This limbo land between letting go of one's dreams and choosing to continue to believe despite all evidence can be hell. Who wants to live with the torture that if they had only tried harder, they could have had their dream? And who wants to spend their life pursuing something that is never going to come? When progress is not happening, how does one cut their losses when it is not clear that they have lost yet?

I have a tendency, inherited strongly from my parents, of living a victim story - I don't have what I need because of X - abuse, lack of love as a child, lack of natural ability today, etc. I fight this tendency all the time, seeking to believe more in myself, seeking to take risk, to learn how to move forward, to grab onto life with gusto. But how long do I live with lack of success before I finally give in? And how can I ever know that giving in is really the right thing to do, when there is no proof that I am truly incapable?

They Get To Do That

2010-04-22T20:03:00.001-04:00

I have been learning lately about boundaries in relationships. One sort of boundary is recognizing the other person's right to choose how they will live and what they will do.

I tend to carry a lot of "should's" in my mind regarding relationships - how we should talk to each other, how we should treat each other, what we should do when we're angry, the ways in which we should maintain a healthy relationship, on and on. What I have been realizing lately is that every one of those should's creates a demand - I am in effect saying to the other, "You have to follow these rules." When they do not, I am angry. I assume they agree with my should's, and that furthermore, they do not have the freedom to break those rules, because there is another person whose feelings they have to take into consideration.

The fact is, they get to do whatever they want, whether or not I like it or not. We all have this inherent freedom, and no one can really take it away from us, other than by brute force. They get to not only make their own decisions and live by their own values, but they also get to break promises, do things that hurt us, be selfish, be unreasonable. They have the freedom and the right to do that. If we have made a commitment with each other, they get to break that commitment if they choose. I cannot take away their freedom.

Of course, there are consequences - not by punishment, but in terms of how much I want this person in my life, how close I want to be to them, how much contact I want to have with them. In a viable relationship, each person will at least consider the possible consequences of their actions. But they still get to do whatever they choose and deal with the consequences.

That may sound like all semantics, but it is not. The difference is in my attitude. If I believe they should act a certain way, I get righteously angry at them for not doing so. I may judge them, I may think I'm better because I am acting the "right" way, I may be frustrated because they are not acting as I want them to act. But if I truly get that they can do as they please, and I don't like what they do, there is no longer room for any judgment. There is room for me to exercise my freedom as well - which may mean talking to them, or letting them know my preferences or how their actions affect me, or distancing myself, or at the last resort, to terminate the relationship. My responsibility is now not to judge or condemn, but to act according to my own sense of values and integrity.

Agreements of behavior can be used as a means of restricting our freedoms, or it can be used to freely choose new ways of doing things.

The necessity of community

2010-04-17T00:03:00.000-04:00

Sometime, in history long past, people gathered together because it was necessary for survival. People discovered they could survive better together than being on their own. We discovered that through cooperation, caring, sharing, and division of work, we were stronger, and could better deal with the world around us. Food became more likely to be found, protection against enemies was more effective, and lessons learned could be shared to increase the capability of everyone in the community. Those who distrusted others or could not cooperate probably died out because of the disadvantages of individualism, and we are left with a genetic pool that inclines us towards connection, caring, and serving each other.

However, today, for the first time in history, a person can live without the good will of anyone, without any connections, community, or relationships, and still have all his needs met - he can have food, clothing, shelter, a job, medical care, retirement for old age, protection from those who might hurt him - all through the social system we have built up over time. Relationship and community are no longer economically necessary.

Having always had throughout history very concrete reasons to join together, we are today lost without the glue of life-threatening adversity. If someone is on the street, we wonder why they don't get welfare, why they don't get a job, why they don't take care of themselves better. After all, there are agencies that handle people like that, right? Our personal services do not seem necessary when compared to the resources of the state, so we do not have sufficient motivation to overcome the risk of reaching out to help another.

Yet, we are still genetically disposed to gather together, to help each other, to develop long-lasting relationships that fulfill our needs. But the drive to do so has been severely weakened, and is now more a matter of feeling good rather than of survival.

Not having a ready solution to satisfy our genetic cravings, and not having a society that demonstrates how to live as community, and having a constant drone of advertisements that all tell us that fulfillment comes from spending more money on the right product, we live as we are told to live, but wonder why we feel dissatisfied, or lonely, or isolated. Our society promotes individual freedom as one of the highest values we have. Why would we then give up personal freedom to live within the rules and customs of a community, if we do not see a return worth the sacrifice?

We may awaken to our true needs someday, if we can get away from the constant influence of corporate and societal forces that give us a very different message than that of our soul. Someday, perhaps we will have advanced to the point where we can be more concerned with fulfilling everyone's emotional and spiritual needs. How much suffering will take place before our awakening?

The Buddhist Paradox

2010-04-15T17:40:00.003-04:00

I am dissatisfied with my current environment. My friends all live too far away, the traffic is horrible, and the attitudes are unfriendly.

The common wisdom among my friends is, "live in the now", "love what is", "let go of demanding things of life", "desire is the cause of suffering". I do find a wisdom in this philosophy, but at times it is hard to pin down.

However, I also know that without dissatisfaction, I will not be motivated to change my environment. When we can see another way of living in our imagination, that is the point we start to become dissatisfied with the current moment. It is this dissatisfaction, this refusing to put up with second best, that often is the motivator for taking action and improving our life.

Yet, experiencing the dissatisfaction while doing nothing about it is a recipe for misery.

It is surely natural, and I would think, healthy, to feel dissatisfied when our needs are not well met. The animals certainly experience this. Yet it is also obvious to me that I do create much of my own misery by demanding so much of the universe that it is unlikely I will ever get what I want. And if I did actually get what I want, would I raise the bar and demand yet more? Am I set up for permanent dissatisfaction, no matter how wonderful a life I have?

So, I often ask myself, where is the line? When do I try to let go and be satisfied with what is, and when do I allow the discomfort within me to grow to a point where I am willing to actually change my situation?

I can see that this line is dependent on several things. First, on what is possible. If I am missing a limb, or don't like how old I am, or I still want to be a rock star, lots of luck. The wisdom that is obvious to me is, accept where I am and what is possible, and live life to the fullest within the parameters given me. These are the cards dealt to me, and it is not in my power to change them.

However, if I have the world before me, and I have plenty of money, energy, intelligence, creativity, courage, and whatever else it takes to move forward, I may very well act, and perhaps without a lot of thought or struggle, making use of the tools I have, so that I can live a richer and fuller life.

When the task before me is difficult and success is uncertain, then how do I know in which direction to apply my energy - work to let go of my desire, or build determination to accomplish it?

It is in this limbo that I often find myself - I am dissatisfied, yet doing nothing about it because of the daunting nature of the solution. Yet I am afraid to let go of my desire, because it is my only hope of change. If I look back and see that I had it within my power to live a much more satisfying life, and I didn't take it, how will I feel about myself?

I find myself wracked with desires, dreams, hopes, creative possibilities. I see ways in which life could be lived, society could be more supportive of human values, relationships could be closer and more satisfying, yet the things I dream about are usually so big, they seem out of my reach. It almost becomes a torment to dream of something good, because of the anger I then experience from the world not being that way today.

How do I love the current moment, and also live my life fully?

A Slave's Purpose

2009-05-28T15:10:00.002-04:00

In pondering my purpose in life, I often imagine the following: what if I had been born a slave in Egypt, building the pyramids? I would have spend my entire life in hard labor at a task I probably did not care about, and probably would have never seen the final product before I died. The vision could equally well be of many other conditions of slavery that have existed throughout humankind's sad history.

I imagine there are two kinds of slaves - those who accepted their lot in life, and those who rebelled, either internally through resentment and depression, or externally through attempts to escape or change the system. Given the chances of actually succeeding in rebellion, I imagine that accepting one's lot in life is the more healthy answer - that there, one can find at least some internal peace.

This is a difficult conclusion for me who values his freedom so highly - to think that it might be better to acquiesce than to fight. We hold those who have fought for freedom so highly in our society as the examples of who we all should be. Yet, no one is ever totally free. We all pay taxes, we all sit on hold waiting for a customer representative to come on the line, we all constantly suffer the small indignities our society has in store for us. Without the skill of finding peace in the middle of restriction, we would all be miserable indeed.

When does acquiescing become an escape, and when does it become a legitimate path to serenity?

I'm about to re-enter the workforce, and am trying to prepare myself to lose 40+ hours of free time each week in return for money. My freedom has a price, apparently - I can be bought. Is this an indignity or a privilege? It feels like a return to slavery. Can I find serenity working for the corporate empire? Should I?

Though he slay me

2009-04-06T11:22:00.004-04:00

It has once again been a long time since I've posted. One excuse I have is fatigue. I have been diagnosed with a long-term lung infection that is sapping much of my energy, and many things have fallen by the wayside. I sleep 12 hours a day, and am not working because of the amount of sleep I need. The infection is expected to last another year, and I am on triple antibiotics to combat it, which may be adding to the fatigue.

The infection has changed my life. There are many things I cannot do that I used to do, or cannot do as much of. I get tired easily, and do not have the physical stamina that I am used to. I dance three dances and go home, instead of dancing all evening. I spend a lot of time at home reading instead of doing things.

Being a depressive as well, it is hard to find the line between what I can do but just don't feel like it, and what I genuinely cannot reasonably do because of the infection. It is a question constantly on my mind, and if I am not careful, I can use the accusation of laziness to beat myself up all day. I am slowly learning to have some sympathy for the various losses I have suffered and are still adjusting to.

Another issue the infection has brought up for me is that of resentment. I have a tendency to fall into a victim attitude, and can easily become resentful over what "life has done to me". In this, I follow in the footsteps of my father, who was partially disabled from when I was five years old, and resented his disability the rest of his life. He was sure to remind us at least yearly of the accident that "did this to him".

From the distant memories of my religious upbringing came a quote the other day: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him". It is from the book of Lamentations in the bible, and is someone speaking about the suffering he is going through and his attitude towards God. The verse struck me, because the author is obviously not talking about trust in the sense of believing he will come to no harm. He is referring to what might be considered an absurd attitude - trusting someone whom you know will hurt you.

This speaks to me more of an attitude of the heart rather than an evaluation of trustworthiness, and it struck me as the only healthy attitude I could think of having in the face of my infection. Life (my substitution for the word "God") is going to do us "wrong", cause us to suffer, deprive us of things we want and need, and that deprivation is inevitable. What attitude do we have in the face of this reality? Resentment? Fear? Bitterness? Resignation? None of these attitudes are useful, and could cause at least as much harm to us as the injury itself.

What came to me from this verse is that the attitude of "trust" he writes about is a willingness to face pain, an openness in the face of known danger, a willingness to play the game for the joy of it, despite knowing you may lose in the end. This is not pretty stuff. But life often is not pretty. Life is often obscene, with its heartless cruelties, handed out with equal ease along with the beauties and joys of this world.

How do we face life in its glory and its cruelty? By being willing to face the pain and danger and still live with an open heart. We all face death, ultimately. What choice do we have but to love the one who will ultimately take our most prized possession away from us?

Books of Healing

2008-11-04T08:07:00.000-05:00

I've been going through books that are piled in boxes as a result of new carpet being put down, determined to reduce my book volume by half. Many of the books are about healing from the past, from trauma, abuse, abandonment - books that I have clung to with desperateness as I strived to relieve myself of some of the pain I was experiencing.

But I am finding many of those books easy to let go of today. I have not looked at them for years, and I know the basic message contained in each one. My healing has not taken the form I thought it would - it is hard to say exactly what I am healed of, and how much I am healed. Yet I am finding these wonderful books no longer critical to my life, and the issues and distortions of my thinking no longer severe enough to warrant the kind of intense attention I used to give it. Healing has in fact taken place - not in a flash with laying on of hands, but through time, thought, and a ton of support and care from friends.

The books have become an indicator of progress that is otherwise hard to see - it is a milestone to discover I no longer need many of the supports I relied on for years. Things are not perfect, and other issues are on top, but there is comfort in seeing evidence that I have actually changed.

Freedom and Disobedience

2008-10-10T10:24:00.000-04:00

This morning, glancing through "The Betrayal of the Self" by Arno Gruen, I read,

"We learn in earliest childhood to yield to the demands of those whose 'love' we are dependent on. Without reflection, we learn to equate freedom with disobedience. Therefore, we respond to freedom...with anxiety and fear...

"The lesson of our childhood is that power, initially experienced at the hands of our parents, promises an escape from the helplessness we despise...Freedom then takes on an entirely different, unexpressed significance: it means deliverance from, not harmony with, our own needs."

Life is about living in harmony with our needs. I heard "needs" defined by an NVC teacher recently as the basic life force that causes everything to live and move, from the first single-celled life form to the complex creatures we are today. Needs are what get us up out of our chair and cause us to desire to live, breathe, love.

To live in harmony with our needs would mean, first, that we know what our true needs are, and second, that we accept our needs as legitimate, and do not apologize for them. How easily said, yet hard to do. But I am learning - by being still, by reading, by reflecting, step by step, mistake by mistake.

Oh, to live straight from source, to feel the wordless part of my being speak to me from its own deep intelligence about my needs, and to see myself respond without question - that seems like a state of being worth living for.

Standstill

2008-10-07T10:11:00.000-04:00

My life is in somewhat of a standstill. Most of the activities that defined who I was have stopped. I no longer do many workshops. I am not writing my books or blogs. I ceased doing my computer job back in April. My move across the country has been put on hold. My primary relationship has changed. And the recent changes in my health have stopped me from dancing, from going to many events that I love, and from seeing friends.

Who am I, having been stripped of the identities that I relied upon to define me? And what is the next step, now that everything has changed?

I realize I am waiting. While I am healing from my sickness, I am doing a lot of reading - books on mindfulness, on happiness, on living. I realize that I am waiting because I don't want to put as much effort into activities that will end up a disappointment. I've spent many years building community, only to find something "wrong" with whatever I create, and leave, dissatisfied, to try again in another format. I've worked hard at various forms of relationship that have not turned out as I had hoped. I've looked at several places in the country that I thought would be more condusive to having the kind of life I want, and yet never found that perfect place that I knew I would finally call home.

The books I'm reading, and the meditation I've done, tell me that there is much flawed in my thinking, that I build a lot on illusion and unobtainable demands. I keep discovering old issues and hurts under what seemed like a noble undertaking. How much of my desire for community is simply missing the warmth of the close family I never had as a child? How much of that desire can never be satisfied? How much have I been surreptitiously demanding that others meet my personal needs, rather than building for the good of all? How much of my leading has been a desperate attempt to be finally seen and heard, rather than the spirit of life and healing pulsing through me? The feeling here is not that I should be perfect; rather, the feeling is that I have poured out a lot of energy in ways that have not fully satisfied the deep longings within me.

And so I wait, and the books are my teachers. I want to know where I can put my efforts that will result in true happiness in my life, and not lead to more disappointment. I want to know what truly satisfies, and to find that out, I feel I must set aside every preconceived notion and find a way of holding myself truly open to new wisdom and experience. When I get up to try yet again, I want it to count more than the previous times. I want to be a bit more mindful where I put my efforts. I want to be a bit more open and aware of the energy and love around me I might have ignored. I want to be less focused on satisfying the ego and more on satisfying the heart.

It is lonely here, in this standstill, and sometimes loneliness is a good thing - it can allow us to center and ground, and ask, what are we really longing for? If past efforts have not worked, maybe I can drop a bit deeper, and ask, what is that inner ache really about? Where will it lead if I drop my assumptions about what I need? Standing here, right now, everything feels expendable in return for true satisfaction.

Freedom from, freedom to

2007-09-07T06:53:00.001-04:00

One of my greatest fears in life is that of being trapped - trapped in a relationship, trapped in a destructive pattern, trapped by lack of options, trapped by lack of power. I have only felt truly free when I was alone, because I tended to take on the obligation of pleasing those near to me.

My fear of being trapped comes from a rigid upbringing, where I was taught the "right" way to be and to act; disobedience was punished severely until my will was broken, and I would obey my mother's will without questioning. I had a pseudo-freedom - when I accepted the limitations placed on me, life became easier. I was rewarded for being docile. As an adult, I have broken away from that and have gone my own way - but fear still dogs my footsteps, and I am always waiting for the punishment to start.

Thus I kept focusing on rights instead of wants - I had to make sure I guarded my freedom, or I would lose it. I focused on freedom from - from structure, from restrictive relationships, from commitments and obligations, from anything that could entrap me - instead of freedom to - to pursue my passions, to make life mine, to discover who I truly was. I was running from instead of running towards.

My fear has been based on a belief in my powerlessness - a belief that I will not be able to resist the forces against me. I was like a bird with clipped wings - I had freedom from the cage, but no freedom to fly. But the fact is that I am no longer a child whose freedom can be restricted and punished at will - like the elephant on a string, I am only restricted because I have not realized I am powerful, that things have changed. My parents are dead, I am a capable and intelligent adult, and I can do as I please.

Only when I know I can avoid what I don't want, can I begin to relax in my power and focus on what I do want. Knowing my power will allow me to start to look around, and ask, what is my desire, instead of what is my right.

Neediness and need

2007-09-06T19:21:00.001-04:00

We all have needs that must be met by other human beings, from needing someone else to grow our food, to needing the companionship of another human being. These are legitimate needs, and unless we choose to become a hermit and grow our own food, others will always be involved in meeting those needs.

Neediness means expecting someone else to figure out how to meet our needs. This places the responsibility on the other person to "do it right", and allows us the luxury of complaining or criticizing them for not helping us, not doing enough, or not doing the right thing.

Taking responsibility for our needs does not mean we do not ask anyone to help; it means we figure out how to meet our needs, then seek someone willing to do what we want. I can't go to a hardware store and ask them to build me a birdhouse; but I can learn how to build a birdhouse and go to the hardware store to get the supplies I need. This gives me freedom to choose how to meet my need - if the store doesn't have the right tools or supplies, I can go to another store until I find what I need, or find another way of building my birdhouse.

We need each other, but we do not need any one person, or any one thing from a particular person. That is our strategy, not the need itself. We cannot obligate anyone to help us, but we can get what we need based on the help and love already available to us.

One source of support is a community with whom we have built goodwill - i.e., we have connected to a community that loves and appreciates us, and we have given abundantly to those in need so that they are willing to do the same for us. Finding people who love us, and to whom we can give our love, is part of our responsibility as adults to provide support when we need it.

You can want; I can say no

2007-09-06T18:53:00.001-04:00

Often in relationships, I find someone else's desire for me to do something different, an uncomfortable experience. My tendency is to want them to stop desiring what they want, or to stop expressing their desire. The result of that is that they have to tiptoe around, acting as if they don't want it, contrary to their true self. To ask them not to ask is to repeat the same sin.

My discomfort comes from my ambiguity of wanting to please them, and wanting to take care of myself and my needs. I'd rather not have the problem in my face than resolve the ambiguity.

But this is no way to live. Having feelings one cannot express always causes distance and destroys intimacy. My job is to learn to deal with my ambiguity. I need to face the possibility of disappointing another human being by fully hearing and acknowledging their longing while saying I am choosing not to fulfill it.

By allowing them to deal with my decision, the responsibility for the desire is placed back on the person desiring it, rather than me taking responsibility for making another person happy.

We will never forget

2007-09-06T18:46:00.001-04:00

I long to be understood, to be heard. And sometimes it happens - sometimes another soul in this world truly gets who I am and what I feel.

But there is a part of me that is so used to not being understood, that I easily discount the bit of connection I experienced and quickly return to feeling not understood.

I have built a shrine to the tragedy of the unheard boy, the tragedy I lived for many years as a child. A part of me is so addicted to the pathos of that tragedy that I would rather continue reliving it than to open my eyes and accept the abundance of people around me who will actually listen.

The shrine, titled "We Will Never Forget", is actually a form of resentment, of repeating our litany of how we were abused, of reaffirming our victimhood. We hold onto the dead body instead of burying it and getting on with life.

I need to switch from worshiping the dead, to mourning the loss, to letting go, to embracing new life and abundance. This is the journey of healing.

Vision of living in primal energy

2007-09-06T18:41:00.001-04:00

Go through life, experiencing everything fully, especially our own hangups and revelations. Feel your feelings fully, like a primal, in the moment; healing can happen in an instant if we are truly open to the feelings and wisdom within. Feelings cement the wisdom within us.

But feeling alone is just hysteria - it must be fully supported by facts, compassion, wisdom, experience, knowledge, in order to have substance. In other words, don't make exaggerated, superlative statements. Be grounded, in touch with what is. Hold the highs down to the ground - stay reality-based, but feel reality fully. In religious terms, this is worshiping the true god (what is) instead of a false god (our story of what is).

Skills of awareness

2007-09-06T18:39:00.001-04:00

There are several basic skills we must have before we really can begin to develop our awareness:

- Learn to distinguish between life-long stories and reality. Start to notice what is actually real, what is present, in contrast to what you believe.

- Be aware of your triggers and limits. Learn what situations are likely to trigger you, and prepare for it ahead of time. Have a plan of action ready to keep yourself safe when you are in the presence of something that triggers you - something that will make it less likely that you will lose your awareness and fall into old stories and dysaction [action contrary to your own values]. Do what you need to do to keep yourself in a place where you can think clearly and act rightly.

- Handle your triggers. When we get triggered, we may say and do things we regret, and our thoughts and beliefs may become distorted. Handling our triggers means we eventually come back to a place of responsibility - we apologize and clean up any mess we have made. We articulate the distortions in our thoughts and actions, and restate to those affected what our true intention and beliefs are, so that trust can be rebuilt.

Desensitizing trauma

2007-09-06T18:33:00.001-04:00

When trying to correct the beliefs that come from a trauma, pick battles that you know you can win. When you seek to overcome a pattern of failure in achieving certain goals, pick goals that are small enough so that you know you can achieve them - like writing one line in the book you want to publish. Likewise, if you are battling with the belief that you are powerless to change your life, pick very small battles to prove to yourself that you are capable of doing something.

It is more important to break the belief that you are helpless, than to try to prove you are superhuman.

If you overlay the present desire with too much fear energy from the past, the fear may cause you to lose the battle in the present moment, replicating the experience of losing the battle in the past, and reinforcing the belief that you are helpless.

Pick a battle you know you can win. Courage will grow with success.

Cognitive Therapy - use visualization

2007-09-06T18:13:00.001-04:00

When countering incorrect emotional beliefs with fact, don't just state the truth to yourself; use visualization of the truth. Engage on a feeling level, not just an intellectual level, in order to cement the truth in.

So, for example, if I find myself feeling that no one loves me, counter it with specific examples of people I know me, but also take the time to stop and visualize and feel the love I have experienced. The eventual aim is to be able to associate the emotional belief with a new emotional belief, not just a theory.

Judging and Badness

2007-08-31T15:08:00.002-04:00

Judging is simply the skill of noticing differences.

Judging people as bad is a problem, not because we judge, but because we believe in badness.

Children on the front lines

2007-08-15T10:18:00.001-04:00

We often send our inner child to the front lines to do our battles for us. Someone says or does something we don’t like, and our inner child gets angry, and starts to fight back. We say or do things we will regret, and we accomplish little beyond hurting ourselves and others, when what we really wanted was love.

Children don’t belong on the front lines. They are vulnerable and ignorant of how to fight in battle. They easily are overcome by emotion, and they do not know how to make wise decisions. This is why we have an inner adult - the part of us designed to deal with this world, who knows how to do things like battle and strategic planning. Children need to be kept insulated from battle.

Thus, in the heat of argument, place your inner child with his emotions, sensitivities, vulnerability in a safe place, then bring out your battle gear, which is all the wisdom you have accumulated as an adult: what you want to accomplish in the battle, what you wish to avoid, what the consequences of your actions are likely to be, what your values are - and face the world with wisdom, strength, grace, and compassion.

This is our job as adults. When we enter any relationship, intimate or casual, part of the job description is handling the emotional energies that come up between us. Expect it, plan on it, sharpen your skills so that you are prepared for it, and when it comes, handle it with all the expertise of a professional. Remember the ultimate goal is love, as much as possible, because it is love that will bring you the most satisfaction. And remember that the most precious part of you is not meant to fight in battle, but to play in the sun.

A Reason To Live

2007-04-13T09:17:00.000-04:00

We need a reason to live our lives - a final justification for why we do everything we do. Pleasure is not a sufficient reason, or else we would simply overdose on heroin and go out of this world with a smile.

Without a reason to live, a sense of meaninglessness haunts our steps, and we may have a suspicion that we are fooling ourselves by working so hard.

We all do in fact have reasons for living, but from time to time, as we mature, those reasons are often found to be faulty, or invalid, or simply not satisfying any more. And if we create our own reason for living, the question will haunt us, why did we create that particular meaning? Is it the right one? What makes it valid? Is it based on fantasy, or perhaps on fear? Is it worthy enough to dedicate our entire lives to?

Yet when we are still, despite whatever we believe, there is something inside that motivates us to live, and to continue to live, through the blackest night. There seems to be a meaning built into us, even when we cannot capture it in words. It is something we discover, not create - something we feel, not decide. And when we hear the words of the deep thinkers, something often resonates, letting us know we are not alone in our questing, and that the illusive reason we seek is not unique to us. If our eyes and ears are open, we discover the commonality between us and others in attempting to name the unnameable.

Flow is my true Father; Love is my true Mother

2006-12-25T19:54:00.000-05:00

As I move through this strange bewildering journey called life, I deal continuously with the cards dealt me in my family of origin. Looking at the shadow tendencies in my life, I see echos of my parents still affecting my decisions and attitudes. My father spent much of my childhood in depression, and my mother in bitterness that he was not what she had wanted or expected.

Often I have looked for the redeeming qualities in them; and there are some for which I am grateful. But lately, I have asked, what are the qualities I have learned from life that gave me birth as a spiritual being, that fathered and mothered this new phase of my life where I live so much richer than before?

Flow has been a critical lesson for me. Instead of demanding the universe be a certain way to meet my expectations, and becoming passive when it does not, I have slowly let go of my insistence, and have learned to flow with the stream of life. It is a dance - I desire certain things, and the universe likewise has its tendencies; together, if we dance and flow, we affect each other, and an ease develops where there is a sense of fitting together, a sense of companionship. Flow is what allows me to take action in the world without cursing the failures nor insisting on impossibilities.

Likewise, love, in the form of acceptance, has been equally critical. I am learning day by day to take everything I find inside me - every nasty thought, egotistical desire, grumpy stinginess, and fearful withdrawal - and look at it with gentleness, like an unruly child whom I love no matter what he does. Once that unruly part of me starts to feel loved and accepted, there is a melting and a sharing of the secrets that has been keeping him fighting me. There is that sense of safety, of home, where you truly cannot do anything wrong.

So, flow and love are my true parents - the reaching out and the reaching in, the masculine and feminine, the creativity and the vulnerability - they are replacing the very imperfect forms that introduced me to life. Maybe the purpose of my original parents was simply to hand me over to better parents when the right time came.

Comment posted by
at 12/26/2006 8:31:30 PM

This post has a very nice poetic flow. Rather than focus on concrete actions or specific examples, the post gives me a more visceral feel for how you are integrating the legacy of your parents. You are healing their emotional impact from one level up; from a level that is more symbolic and embracing rather than specific and linear. Kind of like the healing we may experience in dreams where the impact can bypass the logical mind and be felt on a deeper, more somatic level. The poetic/symbolic/transpersonal and rational minds work together to create integrated healing.

Comment posted by
at 12/26/2006 6:39:51 PM

It is less about redefining my birth parents, and more about seeing flow and love as my parents, guiding me towards a life that is richer and more satisfying than what I had before. I have often approached life from the attitudes that my parents unwittingly taught me, but am slowly learning to adopt these new attitudes as guiding wisdom.

I find it hard to reject my parents’ attitudes, despite their obvious harm - it feels as if I am rejecting my parents themselves. And in a way, I am - I am leaving the familiar attitudes of home and choosing a new way with no memories to guide me. Part of growing up, I guess.

Comment posted by
at 12/26/2006 6:21:10 PM

I had a chance to read your Christmas post about flow and love. It sounds like your journey towards self acceptance is finding a self definition,

I got a little bit lost in the theory, though. Which part is something you are experiencing in yourself? which part is what you are experiencing from others, if any? It seems like you are redefining the roles you have learned about your birth parents, your mother’s bitterness and your father’s victim mode of resentment. Like maybe you believed, at some time, that this was the way the world was. And maybe you are looking at them differently? Or are you finding substitutes for what you really wanted? Or are you finding the love and flow from an internal source to nurture your own child? I am confused about what you might be saying here.

I hope you don’t mind sharing more - this is a bigger picture than you usually write about your own inner world, I think.

Humility

2006-12-06T08:47:00.001-05:00

Humility - an old-fashion word, and not very popular today. For me, it brings up images of self-degredation, or lack of pride in onesself. “Humble yourselves”, in the religion of my childhood, was synonymous with denying what you knew was right in favor of someone who had authority to tell you what the truth was.

Yet we also lose something without this word in our vocabulary. What do we do when we fail at our own values? There are things we believe in, ways we want to live, values we want to measure up to - and as humans, there will be times we fail, when we act in ways we are not proud of, when we do not act like the person we want to be. What is our attitude towards ourselves when we fail?

Well, we can get out our affirmations and psych ourselves up, memorizing statements about how worthy we are, reminding ourselves of the good things we’ve done, and how we will do better next time. Or we can beat ourselves up, repeating critical voices of the past that would have us believe we barely deserve life for the atrocity we’ve committed.

But humility can provide an attitude that is both realistic as well as loving, by acknowledging our weaknesses. We don’t always have the strength of will or presence of mind to live the way we want to live. We can recognize that we are people who cannot always do it alone, that we need the strength and support of others who believe in us. In short, to have humility is the recognition of who we are - not who we want to be, nor who we fear we might be - but simply who we are, with our strengths and weaknesses, successes and failings.

Humility is next to compassion - if we cannot see our weaknesses clearly and without distortion, without shame and without excuses, we cannot have compassion for ourselves. Nor can we truly have compassion for others’ weaknesses if we harbor shame of our own.

We are unfathomably glorious yet terribly fragile creatures, living in a world that, despite the risk, we have to trust.

Remembering Home

2006-12-04T12:03:00.000-05:00

At birth, we wake up to find ourselves incarnate - we discover we are in a new body, surrounded by a new world of strange sensations. All of childhood, we are pushing away the cobwebs of sleep, trying to be fully present and understand this strange place which for a few decades will be our home. Flashes of what came before this life quickly fade, and we are swept away in the drama of being human.

But occassionally, our previous life laughs at us from behind a shadow, or sparkles at us in a glint of sunlight. We ponder who we are apart from the perspective of a body walking on a planet. We get glimpses of ourselves, and others, from some more universal perspective, that we can occassionally reach out of the whirlpool of feelings, desires, pleasures, and sufferings of this life.

Sometimes we become vaguely aware of the dream - the illusions we live in, that we are the center of the world, or the victim, or the lost child, or the one who can solve everyone’s problems. Sometimes we start to notice the props off the side of the stage, or get a glimpse of the audience behind the footlights. Sometimes we have the sudden feeling that everything is set up, and everyone is following some role. Sometimes we notice that a director is prompting our next lines, rather than us choosing what to say and do.

And that is the moment we can ask, if our life is a drama, who is it who got the role? What motivates the actor to take on this life? What is the actor’s true nature outside of this 80-year drama? Who was he before, and who will he be after? And who is he now, in between the moments when he says his lines with such passion that we think it is real?

How many times have these same lines been said in show after show? How many times have the same crucial emotions run their course through endless shows? This cannot be who we are. Can we wake up before the play ends? Can we wake up to the fact that our lines were written by someone else, and we have yet to speak what is true for us?

Somewhere, deep within, is the memory of what came before all this began. Somewhere, there is a place where we will laugh gaily at how we could have forgotten so completely for so long. Somewhere, our true home awaits.

Comment posted by
at 12/4/2006 9:49:44 PM

JUST A DAY AGO I FIND MYSELF POSTING TO A FRIEND HOW TO EXPERIENCE DIRECT REALITY. AND AS YOU HAVE ALLUDED TO YOUR DRAMA ANALOGY, I HAVE TO SAY THAT TRUTH LIES IN THE KNOWING THAT WE CAN SEE OURSELVES PARTICIPATING IN THIS PLAY IN A WAY THAT MIGHT SEEM FIT. WE WILL PLAY DREAM THE OUTCOME. AND IN THE END IF THIS OUTCOME DOES NOT FIT, WE JUST WALK AWAY DISAPPOINTED BUT HOPEFULLY STILL WITH OURSELVES INTACT. AND WE PROCEED TO THE NEXT PLAY UNTIL WE CAN FIND THAT WHICH TRULY FEELS LIKE WE HAVE COME TO A PLACE WHERE WE CAN FEEL WARM AND COZZY. LIKE BEING IN THE MOTHER’S WOMB. BEFORE THE DRAMA BEGAN. I WONDER IF THIS IS WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT.

Changes

2006-12-02T14:07:00.000-05:00

Well, a new look for my blog, and a new software package behind it. Also, a new feeling of growth and change springing up from within, and a new desire to share it with others.

I ponder my fate as someone with deep mood shifts - these past few months have been hard ones for me. I think I experience life more acutely than some - both the ups and the downs. And if I believe that life is ultimately more about joy than pain, then there is a net gain from being a moody person (although, don’t ask me to verify that when I am down!)

Pathwork says our choice is not whether to feel pain or pleasure - our choice is whether or not to feel. We can either live life numb, or we can scream from both the agony and the ecstasy. What a choice! But it seems I really don’t have much of a choice, as I seem to have been born this way.

So, I am alive, some healing and new lessons have come my way, and I look forward to sharing more with all of you in the upcoming weeks.

Comment posted by
at 12/4/2006 1:09:22 AM

Also I like the changes and improvements to your blog, Gene. Now I can reply without being called “Anonymous”. Andy

Comment posted by
at 12/4/2006 1:06:11 AM

It’s good to hear what you both have to say, Gene and Heidi. I look forward to our next get-together at Gene’s, whenever that may be. Andy

Comment posted by
at 12/3/2006 5:39:18 AM

Gene,

What you are saying sounds so familiar to me. I sometimes read what I wrote a few days or months or even a year ago, and it is like I was a different person with different feelings - my mood shifts and ultimately my perspective had shifted. I’m glad I have my own words to validate my own patters. Because I forget how good something felt when I’m down and I forget how badly I felt before when I am feeling really happy.

And at other times, when I feel fresh and excited about a new inner break-through, I go back to see the same pattern in old writings. I’d written all these “new” discoveries in myself before. I see the same struggling passion voiced long ago when I think it is all brand new today.

I feel, today, that I have made real progress. I feel like I am a different person from it - I truly believe in it, deeply. Yet, I read the same passages I wrote a few years ago - the same feeling; like new discoveries and new changes in my patterns made me new — I am puzzled and sometimes discouraged by this counter-discovery in myself.

Is it illusion that I find myself a new person today? Am I fooling myself? Had I forgotten those lessons I learned so long ago and am I re-learning them all over again today?

Or is there yet another new (if only subtle) shift within me that is truly new again?

I don’t have answers to what is really going on inside of myself.

But I’ve been aware that I have a strange pattern seeking and finding wonderful insights. I think, re-reading my own writings and learning how my patterns work is enlightening in itself - perhaps that is part of the change, part of the new person I become. Just knowing that I probably have been here before at a different time and space in my life.

Maybe that’s what you are saying here, too, when you talk about pondering your fate.

Maybe some of us build a life of unique patterns. Maybe knowing ourselves is to know our own patterns without fixing them, just knowing them and living them for the way we are designed to be. (And that “knowing” in itself, is a huge shift in and of itself, maybe?)

I was only going to make a short comment, but your blog got me thinking, so I’ll go ahead and post this part, if it’s ok with you?

Murmur

2006-10-04T15:16:00.000-04:00

"Voices leaking from a sad cafe
Smiling faces try to understand
I saw a shadow touch a shadow's hand
On Bleaker Street"

We murmur with the hopes that someone
yes, someone
will hear the sounds
and somehow see into the chasm of the immense soul
seeking a touch
just a single touch
to pierce our dream of dualism

Each of us carries the burden
of the unspoken secret
the unseen story
the untouched pain

Each of us fearfully yearning
for the piercing of the membrane
that protects others from the shock
of who we are

How precious is that moment
when two souls touch
When true understanding yields words superfluous
And, for a glorious instant,
we are not alone

Truly Letting Go

2006-08-31T15:42:00.000-04:00

At some stages of our lives, we can only go so far into the darkness, because we do not have the resources to deal with everything we find there. We delve in, and deal with as much as we can, and come back out, or heal, or take a break, and integrate what we've learned. At some point we go back in again, a bit deeper, because ultimately each journey, while it hurts, also teaches us the truth about ourself, and I believe down deep most of us want the truth more than anything, and we are willing to suffer great pains (in sufficiently small doses) in order to find it.

Confronting our darkness usually leads to the necessity of letting go of something we cling to - insistences, dreams, fears, hopes, demands, wounds. The letting go is not easy, and we often fool ourselves by slapping on a new coat of paint.

When we only partially let go, whether it be a relationship, a dream, or a plan, there is a thread left, and the dying is not complete. When the resurrection comes, we will follow that thread back to our old ways - the same patterns, the same boxes, the same insistences we had before. When we can truly let go completely, there is the cold silent darkness of death. There is no road back, no chink of light, no anticipation. We let go, and fall into the abyss, and we are no more.

Only at that point can there be true creation. Only then can we rise from the dead a new creature, bathed in white, free to be truly here now. It is possible, after truly letting go of something, we may still return to the same job, the same relationship, the same house. But this time, it will be by free choice, and by intent, and not out of serving some age-old fear that lurks within. When you have faced death fully, there is no longer a place for fear, and you can live instead by love.

Death can be the ultimate terror, because nothing is promised you on the other side. To truly let go requires total faith that life is ultimately good.

Comment posted by Rich May
at 9/17/2006 10:29:00 AM
I really enjoyed your thoughts, Gene. This vividly shows how we deal with changing ourselves.

There are times when I know something has to change, really change. I often find myself using the same old methods, with perhaps a little more determination than the last time, hoping other people have softened up and will do things my way. I sometimes think leaving people alone for a while, then coming back, I will find they have changed. Perhaps time will have changed them.

It is then I remind myself that doing the same old things, the same old way, will yield the same old results. I know I must be the one to change, not others. Others are not trying to change. They don’t even see a reason to change.

On the other hand, I really don’t want to let go of my dreams. I only want to see them clearer. If they seem contradictory and impossible when I look at them through enlightened eyes, I want to delve deeper into what they truly mean to me. What is it I really want? These hopes are stories covering a deeper need. I want to see what is real and true.

It is very hard to let go. Perhaps dying is too much to ask. The string to the familiar always remains. Even when winter comes and everything seems to die, it all comes back from apparently nowhere in the spring. Maybe just planting something new and doing everything you can to make it grow will be enough.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 9/17/2006 9:47:00 AM
Just think we could actually die many deaths. Each day we have stuff to let go off. Each day we can clean up and start fresh. We can walk gently on this earth, conscious of how all that is will be no more. We can play like a child with the wisdom from our experience.

It is strange how we keep ourselves from doing things for fear that we may die, and we dont even know what this death is other than not existing anymore and not being able to do the things we want.

No Calamity

2006-08-15T13:42:00.000-04:00

If we fully grasped
the preciousness of life

the intensity of living would be as great as
the intensity of dying

Lying in the grass would be as important
as curing cancer

Peace would be
as passionate as war

And we would spend as much energy on giving
as we do on security

If we lived life fully
death would be no calamity

Comment posted by Beth
at 8/27/2006 6:36:00 PM
Hi Gene, I just read No Calamity. it is beautiful.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 8/27/2006 11:11:00 AM
Gene,

You've said this so beautifully - our passion, intensity, joy and love of life for the simple sake of life is our most precious possession and our richest gift to each person we connect with.
Thank you for your clear words.
Heidi

Little Bobbing Heads

2006-08-15T08:25:00.000-04:00

This morning, the clouds outside my window are completely still, like a painting. They are so still that I can see the progress of the slowly rising sun behind them, periodically peeping out through a break before gliding on behind the next cloud.

Out there, in God's world, there is no anger, no hate, no right or wrong. There are no should's or shouldn'ts, justice or injustice - there are only clouds, sun, breeze, sounds, creatures. In my head, a totally different world rages - what people should and shouldn't do, what is fair and unfair, how some things are better than others, or worse than others. Throughout this planet are billions of little heads bobbing around with worlds similar to mine, believing in rights and wrongs, just and unjust wars, all convinced that their little world is reality.

Yet between all these little bobbing heads is this vast space, filled with air, trees, creatures, events, sounds, sights - and not any hint of right or wrong, beauty or ugliness. Words like "better" make no sense in this world - is a tree better than a bird without someone to compare them? Is a flower beautiful without an admirer? Only when the eyes in these little heads transmit the signals of what they see to the gray matter not far behind, those signals are reinterpreted to justify the little world inside.

It is odd that we, the most conscious creature on the planet, should be so unconscious of the difference between what we see and what we believe we see.

Comment posted by Tom
at 8/15/2006 2:14:00 PM
I enjoyed your latest blog post. You are becoming a true advaitan! (non-dualist) (smile)

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 8/15/2006 9:20:00 AM
"Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" some say, but I think it's also in what is beheld, and we are spirit and flesh, beholding.--Andy

The Mystery of Spirit

2006-08-10T15:00:00.000-04:00

There are things in the world that fill us with awe. Something as simple as a blue sky in the morning can bring an untamed joy to our sleep heads. A wildflower may arrest our stroll and attention with its beauty and delicacy.

Yet there is no beauty inherent in any of these things. The symmetry, delicacy, color, and scent of the flower are not good or bad - they are just what they are. The experience of beauty resides solely inside of the observer.

Here is the mystery - how does a conscious, feeling, experiencing being arise out of a mechanical and unconscious universe? How can a ghost live within a machine, so alien to its nature? While our bodies obviously belong to the earth, and we share many similarities with the animals and other life forms, our spirits - our consciousness, our feelings, our interpretation of what we experience - seem alien to this world. We look around, and we find ourselves alone among in our experience of wonder and despair.

Yet, like the voice of a gospel singer rising freely above the supporting steady rhythm of the choir, there is a glory in our wild spirituality that sores so high above the rational and physical world that created us. It is only human beings who can understand how wonderful the world is, and who likewise will understand the depths of the tragedy should it not survive.

The miracle is not the beauty of this world - the miracle is that there are human beings that stare in awe and wonder, and are filled with feelings of incredible joy when they behold it. It is only within our experience of the universe that the miraculous lives.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 8/10/2006 8:14:00 PM
What a fascinating subject, the mystery of spirit, how our life and consciousness on this fragile planet came to be, and what we are and what we are part of, and where we might go from here. Faith in creation by God conflicts with the scientific view of chemical events and evolution of life on a hospitable planet in an immense universe coming from a big bang, and out of these ways of thinking I wonder if our seemingly cold and material universe might have some kind of consciousness--spirit--, that some may call God, that is reflected in physical laws such as gravity, and in nature and life and in our human consciousness, even though this universal consciousness does not come from a physical brain as our human consciousness does. Humanity must realize its potential and destiny, not only to survive, progress and improve itself, but to explore the universe and search for other intelligent life. On this subject, some might enjoy reading "Starmaker" by Olaf Stapledon, an imaginative story of a man whose mind explores the universe in search of other intelligent life and the Starmaker, which is God.--Andy

Meditation as Coming Home

2006-08-06T23:39:00.000-04:00

I am an irregular meditator - my habit comes and goes with my mood. I have never found sufficient discipline nor guilt to meditate regularly each day. But I am aware enough of when the need is there, and often make use of my small back yard to sit and connect with something bigger than myself.

This past week, something happened that has never happened to me before. I found myself looking forward to meditating as an actual relief from my normal mental habits. It felt like a warm and familiar place, one where I could relax - like finally, it was okay to not be constantly judging, or deciding what I should or should not be doing, or what was okay or not okay with the world.

For a few minutes, I was relieved of the burden of having to decide the morality of every action that every person and government took, as well as my own self-worth, and worthiness of love. I could let go of anger, interpretation, theories, and return to that space where all I need to do is observe. I hadn't realized how tiring it gets trying to make sure I am right all the time.

My place of meditation that day felt very familiar, like an old friend, as if I was held in warm hands like a baby - nothing to do, nothing to decide, nothing to judge. It felt familiar, being outside, hearing the cicadas, feeling the sun. All there was to do was notice how things were, and to notice myself noticing how things were. It was so simple.

That feeling returned the next few times I meditated, like and old friend greeting me, and I settled down to simply enjoy being there. A few times, I found my mind drifting back to the world of moral responsibility, but I quickly returned to my friend, the world around me, who was patiently waiting for me. I felt like I should apologize for drifting off while in his presence, but realized there was no need to, because his presence was still there, just as strong and warm as before.

It feels like I have come home.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 8/7/2006 4:02:00 PM
I'm glad meditation does so much for you, Gene! Back in the 1970's I was initiated in TM (Transcendental Meditation) for relaxation. Ahhhh! I promised not to reveal the technique, so I won't. Some ways of meditation, some described in books, involve no word or mantra, and some do, such as "One", to be repeated silently in rhythm with the breathing, or naturally, not in rhythm. Whatever works with you is fine! I do not mean to push TM or any one technique. And I would recommend regular exercize also. With TM, at first I felt what seemed like energy streaming along my spine, and felt refreshed and cleansed and youthful, like I would never feel tired. At a meeting of new TM initiates, others reported other experiences, some simply relaxation. Days later, continuing TM, what I felt was just relaxation, as if the initial cleansing and newness were done. Once at a meeting about meditation, not TM, the one leading simply said "Go into your space" and I did just that, like being asleep or unconscious--nobody ever told me to do that before--I must have needed that! Now, years later, I am out of the habit, and meditate seldom, and usually have the TV or radio on except to sleep. What Gene said brings back memories. Although I am retired and no longer have the stress of office work, my better judgement tells me it would be good for me to meditate regularly, or at least now and then. Andy

Comment posted by Lee
at 8/7/2006 10:30:00 AM
Thank you so much for your thoughts. The words I use for myself are attentiveness and noticing; they speak to me in a way I want.

I'm trying to develop life itself as a meditation...........not only as something I set aside time to do. For instance, writing this reply is a form of meditation.

So I'm at the stage of checking in with me and discovering how much attentiveness I feel.......is my mind all over the place; am I focused; CAN I focus and I just notice. Once I notice I look at whether I want to be where I am and if I don't what will it take me to shift. As I'm writing this it sounds very mechanical/in-the-head, but it isn't. It's very fluid and heartful.

Perhaps an example would help. This past week at work..(I'm a nurse)....I had worked 40 hours in 3 days (12-12-16) and was on day 4 working a 12-hour shift. I got a very difficult energy-sucking patient admission. It came to change of shift for the 8-hour nurses and the admission (which wasn't finished) now didn't fall into my block of rooms. Another nurse asked if wanted to keep the admission when she was dividing the patient load. She asked in a way that I interpreted she wanted me to keep the admission. I said to her, "I hear you saying that you want me to keep the admission and no I don't want to keep the admission and I'm exhausted". Those words came out of my mouth and I instantly noticed I needed to get a grip on things; I was out of control. It wasn't her fault I was exhausted. I had chosen to work those hours and I was working another 12 hours the next day with this same nurse. Just the noticing helped me tremendously. I got up and walked over to the assignment board and said I would keep the admission to finish as much as I could in my 12 hours. I live with this mind-set at work that I need to get it all done and it has to be complete and perfect and it makes me crazy......we're a 24/7 operation and it's the responsibility of all of us........I don't have to carry that responsibility load myself.

I went into day 5 knowing my energy was low, even though I had gone to bed early to protect my energy.....I was now working 64 hours in 5 days. I was very conscious that no matter what happened that I wanted to practice remaining upbeat. Sure enough, doesn't one of my patients almost code and I've got to get him off my floor down to ICU. I cannot tell you how much energy this can take and the documentation after the patient has been cared for is enormous and very time consuming. It only took a moment of noticing when the adrenalin rush was coming down after the patient was off the floor and I was documenting that while I was enormously behind, I was taking it all in stride.

So what makes me out-of-control one time and in-stride the next.........that my friend is the key. As I said, I'm only in the noticing stage......but my practice of observing me and all around me is growing and I'm learning every day! Gene, thanks for sharing. It was great to spend this time with you and those who might read.

Discussing Under the Influence

2006-07-25T10:20:00.000-04:00

I was just about to make my clinching argument to the idiot in the
chair across from me, knowing full well he just might not have the
brains to understand it, when a tall man in an officer's uniform came
up to me.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I need to ask you to step out
of your seat."

"What? Who are you?" I demanded angrily.

"I'm the conversation officer, ma'am, now please step out of your seat."

Amazed, insulted, and a bit scared, I did as he said.

"Ma'am, I'm arresting you for D.U.I.E."

"What on earth is that?", I demanded.

"Discussing Under the Influence of Emotions", he answered back with a
steely face.

"I wasn't under any influence!" I countered, "I KNOW PERFECTLY WELL
WHAT I'M SAYING."

"Ma'am, please cooperate, and this will go much easier. Now I need to
have you do a few tests. Would you please breathe into this
analyzer?"

Still annoyed, but getting more frightened, I did as he asked. "What
is that supposed to measure?" I asked.

"It tests to see if your breathing is deep, slow, relaxed, and
completely fills your lungs", he said, writing on his pad. "I'm sorry
to say that the results show you are breathing rapidly and shallowly -
a sure sign of not being centered. Now I'd like you to walk forward
slowly in a straight line, feeling your connection with the earth
under each foot."

I walked as slow as I could, but didn't feel much of anything, except
anger and humiliation.

"Just as I thought, ma'am, you are not grounded at all - your first
chakra is completely disconnected." He scribbled more notes on his
pad. "For the last test, I'd like you to look deeply into the eyes of
the person you were just arguing with, and tell them from your heart
that you love them."

This I simply could not do, no matter what the consequences. I cast
my eyes downwards.

"I see," he said, "you are coming from a place of fear instead of
love." Fear, I thought? I thought I was angry. Could I have been
angry because I was afraid of something?

"Ma'am," the officer interrupted my thoughts, "you know that with a
few more violations of this nature, you can lose your licence to
connect deeply with others. Your driving influence in this community
may be severely curtailed."

The emotions were starting to settle, and I began to realize how out
of control I had been. I began to see how I could have done
significant damage to my relationship.

"Fear and love do not mix, ma'am." he said with a kinder voice.
"There's nothing wrong with having emotions - just be careful where
you express them."

He put away his notebook and pen, and turning, he said, "Ma'am, I
can't put you in jail for this. You can put yourself in jail if you
want, but only you hold the key." And with that he walked out of the
room.

I looked back to my opponent, who was still looking at me as if he
hadn't seen the officer at all. Now underneath the glare, I noticed
he too seemed to look scared, the way I had been. So I sat down next
to him, took a deep breath, and said, "Okay, I'm ready to really hear
you now."

Fireflies in the Grass

2006-07-18T13:17:00.000-04:00

Last night, I was sitting out in the hot tub, and noticed some fireflies in the grass. Their fairie lights always fascinated me. The magic was still about them, undispelled by years of adult rational living.

One of them was lit constantly, as fireflies do when they're dying, and I wondered what had injured it, and why the fireflies were in the grass instead of sparkling in the night air. Then I remembered.

Last morning, I prayed to the gods to give me a bug-free backyard. I prayed by hooking my hose to a pesticide and spraying it over the grass and shrubs. The mosquitoes had been horrible as I had tried to catch a few meditative moments outside, and I decided to do something about it.

And the gods answered my prayer. But I hadn't thought about the fireflies.

This is our dilemma, isn't it? The wonderful power we have gained to conquer disease, build a better world with better food, assure the ability to stay warm in the winter, a better world with transportation and education and medication - that same power is what has enabled us to destroy forests and mountains, wipe out species, and alter the temperature of the planet to what may turn out to be a lethal amount. How can we know today what we will need tomorrow to survive? Which actions will we regret, and which will turn out to be wise?

We are a naked child sitting in the grass playing with a loaded gun, incapable of comprehending the power that lies in our hands.

Comment posted by Patrick Levasseur
at 7/29/2006 10:44:00 AM
I had forgotten all about fireflies as a child until I moved to northern Vermont this year. My first night there it was pitch black, without the moon as I hadn't yet turned any lights on from my nap, pondering my fate and lonelyness. To my horror I saw these eerie lights flashing through the kitchen window out in the yard and my heart sank with fear as I got the nerve to go outside and investigate. I was suddenly taken back to my childhood and remembered the fairies that would float along in the air as the light faded in the sky. There were hundreds of them both high and low, illuminating the pitch black so I was able to see the different parts of the yard for just a moment, and then disapearing again in to blackness. I could hear the bullfrogs in the pond as they took turns singing to one another and suddenly wasn't afraid anymore. I felt so grateful, my heart was pounding, and felt as though it was going to explode. I wasn't alone for that while, I finally had a home at such a wonderful place, mosquito bites and all.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/19/2006 7:34:00 AM
I agree with your comments, Gene. When I was a young child, on a summer night I would look at and chase after the fireflies (also called lightning bugs) in the back yard, and look up at the stars, but now I don't see either as much as before in the DC area, perhaps because of pollution, although I saw fireflies in the back yard of the people who hosted the Folklore Society's monthly Open Sing most recently; apparently they thrive only in certain kinds of places. Humanity is harming life on our planet in a number of ways, and I feel concerned about it. By the way, I enjoyed all that our group did last Sunday evening at your home; thanks for having us over. Andy

Father Zossima's Brother

2006-07-09T19:20:00.000-04:00

I'm including a post from Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov". It's rather long, and the russian writers are not usually who I go to for inspiration, but this piece has always moved me to tears, and somehow seemed relevant to the recent postings. I want to share it with you all.

Father Zossima's Brother

In the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never strong and had a tendency to consumption, was taken ill. It was a late Easter, and the days were bright, fine, and full of fragrance. I remember he used to cough all night and sleep badly, but in the morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an arm-chair. That's how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright and joyous, in spite of his illness. A marvellous change passed over him, his spirit seemed transformed. The old nurse would come in and say, "Let me light the lamp before the holy image, my dear." And once he would not have allowed it and would have blown it out.

"Light it, light it, dear, I was a wretch to have prevented you doing it. You are praying when you light the lamp, and I am praying when I rejoice seeing you. So we are praying to the same God."

Those words seemed strange to us, and mother would go to her room and weep, but when she went in to him she wiped her eyes and looked cheerful. "Mother, don't weep, darling," he would say, "I've long to live yet, long to rejoice with you, and life is glad and joyful."

"Ah, dear boy, how can you talk of joy when you lie feverish at night, coughing as though you would tear yourself to pieces."

"Don't cry, mother," he would answer, "life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we won't see it; if we would, we should have heaven on earth the next day."

Everyone wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely and positively; we were all touched and wept. Friends came to see us. "Dear ones," he would say to them, "what have I done that you should love me so, how can you love anyone like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not appreciate it before?"

When the servants came in to him he would say continually, "Dear, kind people, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve to be waited on? If it were God's will for me to live, I would wait on you, for all men should wait on one another."

Mother shook her head as she listened. "My darling, it's your illness makes you talk like that."

"Mother darling," he would say, "there must be servants and masters, but if so I will be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And another thing, mother, every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than any."

Mother positively smiled at that, smiled through her tears. "Why, how could you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and murderers have done that, but what sin have you committed yet, that you hold yourself more guilty than all?"

"Mother, little heart of mine," he said (he had begun using such strange caressing words at that time), "little heart of mine, my joy, believe me, everyone is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything. I don't know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is so, painfully even. And how is it we went on then living, getting angry and not knowing?"

So he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and full of love. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt, came:

"Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?" he would ask, joking.

"You'll live many days yet," the doctor would answer, "and months and years too."

"Months and years!" he would exclaim. "Why reckon the days? One day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let's go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life."

"Your son cannot last long," the doctor told my mother, as she accompanied him the door. "The disease is affecting his brain."

The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began suddenly begging their forgiveness too: "Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too." None of us could understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. "Yes," he said, "there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonoured it all and did not notice the beauty and glory."

"You take too many sins on yourself," mother used to say, weeping.

"Mother, darling, it's for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I can't explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I don't know how to love them enough. If I have sinned against everyone, yet all forgive me, too, and that's heaven. Am I not in heaven now?"

And there was a great deal more I don't remember. I remember I went once into his room when there was no one else there. It was a bright evening, the sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted up. He beckoned me, and I went up to him. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face tenderly, lovingly; he said nothing for a minute, only looked at me like that.

"Well," he said, "run and play now, enjoy life for me too."

I went out then and ran to play. And many times in my life afterwards I remembered even with tears how he told me to enjoy life for him too. There were many other marvellous and beautiful sayings of his, though we did not understand them at the time. He died the third week after Easter. He was fully conscious though he could not talk; up to his last hour he did not change. He looked happy, his eyes beamed and sought us, he smiled at us, beckoned us. There was a great deal of talk even in the town about his death. I was impressed by all this at the time, but not too much so, though I cried a good deal at his funeral. I was young then, a child, but a lasting impression, a hidden feeling of it all, remained in my heart, ready to rise up and respond when the time came.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/12/2006 10:21:00 AM
Wow that is beautiful and inspiring. thank you.

Dancing with delight

2006-07-09T18:52:00.000-04:00

Last week I danced with Heather. She just glows with this pure joy when she dances - no flirting, nothing put on, no sexual energy - just the pure joy of dance. I look in her face, and I remember what pure joy feels like.

Every 32 beats, we are apart, and I forget, and we come back together, and I remember wqhat joy looks like again. It fills me with such glory and happiness.

The odd thing is nothing external changed. I danced, I looked into her face, and suddenly I was happy. All she did was remind me that joy is available. The implications are staggering. It means I could have been that happy all along, and I just forgot that the dance was that enjoyable, that the dance makes me happy, that life is a wonderful thing. It's remembering the joy we had as a little kid from just sucking on our toes.

Why can't it be that way all the time? Why am I not accessing this energy all the time? It's inside of me, as my friend Ann always says.

Are there reasons to not be happy? Yes, I can think of some. But most of the time that I am unhappy, the reasons are not valid. Most of my depression comes from repetitive thoughts of the past, and are not in touch with the present moment. Heather was deriving her pleasure from the present moment, from the pure experience of the dance.

There was no desire for anything, nor any fear of losing anything. She knows it's temporary, it will go away - but she also knows it will come back. That absolute security brings her absolute happiness.

We wander around looking for meaning, forgetting the simple joys. There is meaning in happiness. When Heather dances, there's meaning there. It's not nothing. It's absurd to say there's no meaning there. For that instant, the dance is so important, it fulfills her whole being with joy, and she glows.

May we all awaken to the joy inherent in the dance of life.

Comment posted by R in Northern Virginia
at 8/4/2006 10:24:00 AM
Dancing is glorious! I remember the freedom when, as a teenager, I learned how to really move my body. A dear friend of mine, who is, incidentally, a beautiful and talented dancer, taught me. She moved with me, put my hands on her body to better experience the sinewy movements which define the difference between joyful dancing and the fulfilling of an obligation.

Your post really is about living the present moment -another lesson I keep forgetting and relearning--but reminded me of that dance experience--tten years ago, a lifetime for a woman in her twenties.

Keep sharing your thoughts, pleas. I recently discovered your journal and am enjoying it.

Small Details

2006-07-07T16:31:00.000-04:00

Days go by, and I hesitate to write in my blog because I don't know if it will please my audience. I so much crave attention from others, as if, like the falling tree in the forest, I would cease to exist if no one heard me. And yet, I know my audience is few - dear friends, yes, but not the world-wide acclaim my ego would hope for to assure me that I am loved.

Today I sit outside with nothing between me and the air, reading the journals of Etty Hillesum, and from her frankness, I am again inspired to write. She details her life as if it matters - as if her feelings about a tree being cut down matter. My tendency is to look for "important" things in my life to share - great insights, clever sayings, dramatic events, as if the rest of my life is not really worth it. Yet the smaller things are important to me, or I would not go through them. I would not have driven to the store to buy eggs for breakfast if it had not mattered - I could just as easily have had cereal. But I took the trouble to dress, go out, go through traffic, go through the cold store, and come back maybe 40 minutes later, just so I could have three fried eggs.

Etty's journals show such intimate delight in her life that I can see that it is the small details that make life worth living - it is noticing and loving the movement of the sun, first as it beat down warmly on my skin, making me sweat, then as it moved behind the house, bringing a refreshing chill on the breeze. This is living, this is what life is about perhaps. We fight wars and diseases and amazing hardships just so we can sit in our backyard and feel the sun and breeze once again on or skin. Is this not the purpose of it all?

Today I am at home, alone, relishing my aloneness. I had planned to be in Oregon today, and I cancelled the trip at the last moment and at significant expense, because something inside me was in agony, struggling to be heard. Too often I ignore what appears to be trivial to me - this time I listened. And in the stillness I see more clearly that I need to speak and live my truth, and how I need to pick my words, not for imagined effect on my popularity, but because it is what I need to say.

Comment posted by Gene
at 7/9/2006 5:32:00 PM
Why, I'm delighted, Sapphire - you're the first new voice on my blog. Thank you for speaking up. Hope more posts speak to you also.

This lesson continues to challenge me - my distain for triviality runs deep, and I need to reach even deeper to find reality. After all, what will be left after we have destroyed the earth and there is no one left to even remember our passing? Nothing - no cures for AIDS, no great philosophies, no technological breakthroughs - nothing except our experience - the fact that one day, a glorious creature basked in glorious sunshine, and was fully aware of the glory of that moment. Perhaps that one day, that one experience, is enough to justify the long journey the universe has travelled to produce such a miracle. Is it possible?

Comment posted by Sapphire
at 7/9/2006 5:15:00 PM
I happened to find your blog on the main page of Blogger and read this post. It is so elloquent. I think many of us fall into that same rut of perhaps starting a blog for ourselves, but then when people visit, our ego swells and then it changes to blogging to keep people coming back for more. We lose sight of the fact that we started the blog for ourselves, not for the masses.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/8/2006 8:34:00 PM
I'm glad you said that, Heidi, about loving life and all its little pleasures. It's good to hear from you also. Andy

Comment posted by Heidi
at 7/8/2006 7:27:00 PM
I imagine a professional counselor would have wanted those 3 eggs for breakfast also *grins* It is refreshing for me to hear someone expound on the melacholy of the inner mind only to be calmed by the beauty of the most trivial mysteries of nature in their own back yard. I'm glad others find peace in simplicity - and yes, maybe that's really the purpose of life - just being alive and loving life, I think. God doesn't need us to be important for Him - he's already done it all for us. But I guess sometimes we simply need to feel and express it and that makes it all important to us.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/8/2006 8:01:00 AM
Hey, I hear you, Gene, whether you're a falling tree or whatever! Keep letting us know your thoughts and where you're at, and call us together to meet at your home whenever you feel like it, or be alone when you feel like it. (Being alone in a crowd, like at a folk festival, is what I often do; it's better than being really alone at home, although at home at least I can watch cable TV.) We need more people in this world who like attention and add something to other people's lives. It sounds like you're going through some heavy stuff right now that you don't want to keep to yourself, so maybe you would benefit from some professional counseling. Anyway, it's good to tell us what's on your mind. Andy

Shadow - The Final Frontier

2006-06-29T10:31:00.000-04:00

I have become dedicated to the ancient edict, "Know thyself". If I am truly the creation of the divine, then getting to know myself is the most immediate way of getting to know the divine. And getting to know myself means getting to know the part of me in shadow as well as in light.

The Shadow is a Jungian term used to describe the parts of ourselves we are not aware of, that tend to act independent of our conscious desire and will. The shadow is simply a part of ourselves that the light of consciousness does not reach. It is not evil; it is simply unknown. Many of us hide our goodness as well as our faults within our shadow.

These days, I find myself digging into my shadow more and more. It is the part of me not yet known, not yet accepted or integrated into who I am. It is the final frontier - the part of me that has eluded my awareness the longest. In it, I believe, lies the secret to who I really am - a divine being on this earth in order to experience being human.

There is ugliness in the shadow, just as a wound can be ugly. But hiding the ugliness prevents help from ariving and healing from taking place. We often shrink from ugliness, especially our own, because we think it makes us bad. Thus we avoid the healing light of consciousness where we need it most.

In order to have the confidence to look into our shadow with curiosity instead of dread, we must know without a doubt that we are good, and what we find has nothing to do with our inherent worth. Otherwise, digging up dirt is just another way of confirming our suspicion that we do not deserve love.

Comment posted by Gene
at 7/9/2006 5:49:00 PM
Yes, all of me is good, including my shadow. The shadow is not something of evil - it is merely something I have hidden from myself. If I do not know I am divine, that means my divinity lies in shadow, and I need the light of consciousness to shine on it so I can know I am divine. Much of us lies in shadow, otherwise we would not act with the ignorance we do.

I hear you, Lee - I still like the word "ugliness" for a reason. Much of what people do, including myself, is ugly. War is ugly. Suicide bombers do ugly things. Politicians who server their own interests instead of the interests of their constituancy are ugly.

Ugly in my mind does not mean bad. A gaping wound in my foot can be ugly, if it is swollen, bleeding, and full of dirt. But the proper response to ugliness is to shine a light on what is ugly, give it careful attention, clean it up, care for it, and bring it back to a healthy place.

For me, this is a kind and loving way of looking at the things I do that I am ashamed of - I am not bad, but sometimes I look at how I act or think, and I cringe - I cringe because I see it is contrary to my divine nature. The person who does not cringe is no longer aware when he is far from his true nature.

Comment posted by Lee
at 6/29/2006 8:43:00 PM
Gene, you said: "In it [shadow], I believe, lies the secret to who I really am - a divine being on this earth in order to experience being human."
I believe the great discovery for you is that you are already a divine being.........you don't need to understand any more of yourself to reach that conclusion.............don't keep looking to find the divine...........feel the divine that is right there within you and look for the divine you haven't discovered!

Gene, you said " There is ugliness in the shadow, just as a wound can be ugly. But hiding the ugliness prevents help from ariving and healing from taking place. We often shrink from ugliness, especially our own, because we think it makes us bad. Thus we avoid the healing light of consciousness where we need it most."

Gene, I'd like to rewrite this..........There is love in the shadow, just as a wound can be love. But hiding the love prevents help from arriving and healing form taking place. We often shrink from love, especially our own, because we are afraid to recogniaze our greatness. Thus we avoid the healing light of consciousness where we need it most......right at home within ourselves.

Often shadow is associated with dark and dark is associated with negative..............there is great love in the shadow. There is not ugliness in my shadow............ugliness is in the eye of the beholder and I'm not ugly nor do I have any ugliness.

I believe that all of me is good, including my shadow; I'm a work in progress. I'm all good and there are good parts of me that I'm trying to make better.

I've spent way too much time on the negative side......I strive to be on the positive side and stay there and improve myself from the positive perspective.

Gene, thanks for giving me a venue to reaffirm my lovliness!

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/29/2006 5:30:00 PM
I've been thinking about what both of you commented on about philosophies of the hidden self and getting to know the shadow.
It sounds like you are both intrigued more with the fearful elements (although you do mention the more desireable ones that may also be hidden.)

In my experience, I have been so deeply exposed to the "thou shalt nots" the forbidden rules of society, culture and peer groups the sense of shame and guilt that I've lost much of my child-like self confidence and desire for self-love.

I hope you are right that in my journey, I can re-discover how to love myself as much as I strive to love others!

I've been on a journey lately that speaks to the beauty within and I'm struggling with recognizing that inner peace. I think I am far too familiar with the fearful side (probably not my shadow at all anymore) I am quite a stranger to loving my own inner person as fully as I would like.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 6/29/2006 11:54:00 AM
I agree with what you say, Gene. I am not so familiar with Jungian psychology and the "shadow", but I know that Freudian psychology recognizes the id as well as the ego and the superego, and both Jung and Freud recognized the subconscious, I believe, and that it influences us without us fully realizing it. Eastern religion recognizes the chakras, energy centers in our body, which include the lowest chakra related to sex, reproduction, and self preservation, and that we need a balancing of the chakras, that each is a natural part of us. Religion tries to fill in gaps in scientific knowledge with faith and myths that sometimes turn out to be wrong in light of scientific discoveries. Modern science recognizes biological evolution leading to the development of humans, who rise above nature in our sense of morality, and our society, folkways, intelligence and technology, and exploring the universe, yet we are still a part of nature, still having physical needs and limitations including mortality regardless of what we may believe about an afterlife. I believe in living one life at a time. Christianity talks about "original sin" and our selfish nature, but I also believe in "original goodness", our natural feeling of love and caring for each other based on empathy aside from any religion-based belief in divine rewards and punishments or in a spiritual command to "love ye one another" or "love thy neighbor as thyself", which assumes that we do love ourselves, a healthy self-esteem and wanting to enjoy life. I agree with the saying "know thyself", including what is in our "shadow" or subconscious or selfish side of each of us as a basic part of ourselves. There is a saying, by some Jewish thinker, I believe, that being strong (morally) includes controlling our passions. Recently I went to a discussion of "Have we learned anything from religion?" I have found that I have some things to unlearn from my protestant Christian religious upbringing. During the 1960's, that wonderful golden age of love, flower power, and breaking free, there was the saying, "If it feels good do it, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody". I agree with what one Jewish thinker said, that "the good life" includes enjoyment as well as morality. Here's to the good life! Andy

The Would-Be Guru

2006-06-26T21:39:00.000-04:00

It has been a real blow to my ego to discover, after I'd been writing this blog for several weeks, that the world has apparently not been desperately waiting to learn every profound thought and experience of my life. Even friends don't seem to have caught on to the vast amounts of wisdom they could be gaining if only they would read my blog. My guru image is being severely threatened.

It has challenged me to question why I am doing this. I know that I have a strong desire to be seen and heard, and the idea of putting myself out on the world wide web for all to see was very appealing. And, as far as I can tell, I have very few readers, or at least commenters. But I continue to write, even though the fantasy of becoming one of the most widely read blogs on the web has quickly faded.

So why do I continue? I discover it does something to me to write, and to be potentially exposed, even if no one ever reads what I write. I know they could, and that makes a difference to me. I am challenged to ask who I am, how I want to present myself to the world, what do I choose to hide and what do I choose to show, and why.

How much my fantasy of greatness continues to fuel my posts, I don't know.

Comment posted by Gene
at 7/9/2006 5:39:00 PM
Hi, Lee. You ask good questions. "Do you think you are wise and great, and if so, do you need others to validate that or convince you?" Yes, a part of me indulges in the fantasy that everything I do is wonderful. Another part indulges in the thought that nothing I do has any worth at all. I know that reality is neither, but that does not always stop me from acting out from these extremes."

"Why does it make a difference [if people could read your blog]?" Because when I harbor fantasies about myself, there is no challenge, other than my own vigilence, to the fantasy. When I consider putting it out on the web, I suddenly am faced with the spectacle of hundreds of people reading my claims, and it sobers me. I have to stop and consider what I *really* believe about myself, and not just what I fantasize. So the exposure forces me to be more honest with myself. (After all, what would people think of me if they caught me lying??? :) )

Thanks for your input.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 6/28/2006 5:41:00 PM
I try my best to keep as low a profile on my ego as I possibly can and I'm not always successful. To be doing something so that others will feed the hungry ego is a process to be examined. It's looking outside one's self for self validation instead of writing the blog purely from energy within to feed the energy within.

"I know that I have a strong desire to be seen and heard" Why do you have that desire. Do you want people to look up to you (in the physical sense, they already do!); do you want to be seen as wise or great? If so, where does this need come from? Do you think you are wise and great and if so, do you need others to validate that or convince you?

"I discover it does something to me to write, and to be potentially exposed, even if no one ever reads what I write."
This is writing more from within........for you! You put yourself out there for YOU and what others do with it is their choice. You are not responsibe for them; your blog cannot rescue them, they must do that themselves.

"I know they could [read the blog] and that makes a difference to me"
Again, I ask, why, why does it make a difference? Apparently Andy has been reading your blog but you didn't realize that. Do you feel differently now, why? You really don't know what he thinks of your blog, but you know he's reading it............so what now?

I'm not saying we should all be islands and what others say and think about us doesn't have some meaning and purpose. I believe humans to be social creatures. But I am concerned when actions are generated for the purpose of feeding an ego rather than for the action itself and letting the Universe decide the fate of the action.

I hope some of this makes some sense............Lee

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 6/28/2006 12:08:00 AM
I read everything you put on the internet, Gene, even though I don't always reply. By the way, I was out of town at the Old Songs Festival, a great folk festival, near Albany, NY, and returned late Monday, otherwise I would have replied sooner. Andy

Baby Birds and the Future of the Human Race

2006-06-26T11:00:00.000-04:00

Zipping along in a hurry to get to work, I saw a bird in the right lane that I assumed would fly away when I got near enough. It did not. It make a few unsure hops towards the curb, and stopped as I swerved around it.

I realized it was a baby bird, not yet able to fly. Normally it would have been obvious to me to get to work on time rather than mess with the trivial issue of a baby bird on the road - but reason did not prevail. I found a place to turn around and drove back, hoping I would reach it before someone's tire did.

Eventually I was driving slowly past the spot where it was, and I saw it on the grass by the curb. I stopped my car in the right driving lane and hoped I would not cause an accident. Visions of President Lincoln stopping on the way to a meeting to help a pig out of a mud pit flashed through my mind. I got out and easily picked it up in my hands. It gave a squalk, then tried to eat my finger, while I looked around for a safe place to put it.

Next to the side walk was an immense stone wall, with no break within sight. Overhead, two robins were chirping frantically in the trees. There was no nest to be seen. Full of misgivings, I set the baby bird down under the parents, as close to the wall as possible, hoping that the parents could figure out some way of keeping it out of the road. It seemed pretty hopeless.

Why go to all that trouble and care for a baby bird, when next to me several dozen acres had just been cleared for a new building, with untold destruction to hundreds of creatures which had found a home there? As someone said, it mattered to the bird.

And why go to all the trouble of saving the earth from global warming? We are, after all, only one planet of theoretically billions, which may have life far more intelligent than ours. Why bother? Because it matters to us.

It is not logic that drives us to preserves life, nor to get out of bed in the morning. There is some passion deep within us that we do not control. It is because meaning is found deep inside, and not from some religious edict or logical conclusion of what we should do.

I find myself today more distracted by the thought of tires and feathers than melting icebergs. Today, that is closer to home. Tomorrow may be another story.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 6/27/2006 11:54:00 PM
Gene, your comments bring some things to mind. I remember seeing a peeping bird that couldn't or wouldn't fly, standing up to a barking dog that had the bird backed up against a curb, so I scared the dog away.
I heard the story about Lincoln and the pig, that he helped it get unstuck from a fence, so in school I drew a picture of that, and I didn't understand why my teacher didn't like it, until years later when I realized she must have thought it looked like Abe was having sex with the pig.
I, too, have thought about the idea that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, but we only know of it on our own living planet. But suppose that somehow there is a universal life force that focuses itself all in one place, which happens to be our planet? But any way you figure it, life on Earth (Gaia) is precious and we must save it! Andy

Comment posted by Gene
at 6/26/2006 7:12:00 PM
I got the journal fixed - my host switched servers, and I was pointing to the wrong one. Thanks for noticing.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/26/2006 7:11:00 PM
I love the story -- I have been there when you rescued birds before, too.

BTW - your journal only goes up to June 12 -- that last couple of posts seem to be missing.

A Hard Morning

2006-06-23T19:04:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning with the most beautiful hard-on I have had in a long time. Full, and bursting with life, I felt like if I turned over, you could spin me like a top.

Finally, an experience I can claim women can't understand. It has been a while since I woke up this hard. It is not a particularly sexual feeling - there is no need for any kind of satisfaction or release. It is satisfying just to feel the energy buzzing in my body and pushing outward - as if the thickness yearned to expand and fill the universe. I feel the pleasure of it pushing against the sheets, strong, bold, incapable of hiding.

Why does it feel so risky to write about my sexuality on the world wide web? I'm not revealing anything someone couldn't have guessed. Am I afraid of losing readers who don't want to know I have a penis? Am I afraid of breaking a taboo? (who, me??) Do I want to pretend I am just a mind, and my body is just an uninteresting machine carrying my head around?

Since I started this blog, I've struggled with just how honest I want to be. The fearful part of me does not want to offend anyone, nor allow someone to laugh at me. Yet it rankles me to have to be selective about who I admit I am. It reeks of the days when I was ashamed, when such things could not be spoken of, when mother was listening on the other side of the door.

Yet I feel there is some tremendous gift awaiting me if I put all of myself out there, even if no one is reading this blog. *I* know I have revealed myself - I have nothing left to hide. If I chat with someone who thinks I reveal too much about myself, I can say, "Boy, you should read my blog!" Of course, they will when they go home, then pretend the next day they didn't. Isn't that what we all want, to know and be known?

I long to integrate all that I am, to shed the right and the wrong, the fear and the ego, and just let be what is. Isn't that, after all, what the universe does? The sun doesn't turn its face - it shines on the sexual and the mundane, on the lawyer and the hamburger-flipper, on the suicide bomber's morning as well as the innocent people he will kill today. This, to me, is the meaning of the phrase "God is love". The universe does not ask who deserves to breathe its fresh air this morning - it freely gives regardless of our judgments.

The hard-on has faded, and now I can tuck it away and go out among the other penises and vaginas properly hiding under business clothes, in a world where we have all apparently agreed on the fantasy that certain parts of us do not exist.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/10/2006 11:23:00 PM
Gene
You are just beautiful
that's all

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/9/2006 5:24:00 PM
wow, you are brave to put that out there. and I like what you said about it.

Reclaiming Innocence

2006-06-12T19:36:00.000-04:00

The receptionist at my new doctor's office was a young chinese girl with a big smile, soft voice, and innocent face. As she took my patient information, she chatted about herself and the world. She had the presence of an infant, grabbing her toes and softly cooing, pleased with everything, laughing at a delightfully absurd world. I could not imagine that my bodily woes and worries would make any sense to her.

As we chatted, I felt my face lighting up with the reflection of hers, and vague memories arose of a world I once knew, wide-eyed in a benign universe. I felt in love over her smile and a few meaningless words, and suddenly I wanted her, wanted to possess her laughter and light, wanted to pull her body into mine so that I could merge with her naked joy of life.

And the thought occurred, was I simply wanting to strip her of her innocence so that through her I could re-experience the pain of my own loss?

I know all too well that that there is something in me that keeps me from reentering that world - the fear of being fooled again, of being too naive, of risking vulnerability, of pain. And so I peer longingly over the wall I have built that guards me from what I long for, convinced that I need to be serious and grown up and realistic.

Yet her smile lingers in me, and I am unable to give up the desire for what I have left behind.

More thoughts from the discussion

2006-06-11T12:31:00.000-04:00

I left the discussion yesterday feeling lonely. Perhaps I had hoped to find kindred souls, people who resonated deeply with my own experience, people whose experience I could deeply resonate with. Instead, the struggle of intellectual polemics still weighed on me, and I left, feeling unseen and unheard.

Yet a woman there had heard me - she even remarked outloud she was interested in my point of view, and wanted to talk more with me about it. No one else's remarks had gotten that particular honor.

I thought about it as I was walking away, thinking, I should go back and be open to the chance that this woman and I might have some common interest of the soul that would at least partially satisfy my hunger. But I did not turn around. The vision of being alone, unheard, not understood was so dramatic, poinent, even enrapturing, that I chose to continue in my drama than disturb it with the possibility of a different reality.

It is an old story, one I am increasingly becoming tired of. It is true that as a child, I found no connections, no one to relieve me from my self-alienation by telling me, "Here's who you are. Here's what I see when I look at you." I grew up in this strange confusing inner world of swirling thoughts and conflicting feelings, and found no one who could help me make any sense of it all, or give me a sense of who this person was who had the thoughts and feelings.

And when I go to an event like this, and I am not fully reassured that my thoughts are valuable, I fall back to the old story - still dramatic and full of pathos for me after all these years.

It is time to let the old story go, and step into my power.

I'll meet you there

2006-06-10T18:10:00.000-04:00

I attended a discussion today on "Why are we here?", from which I wrote the previous post. As with many discussion groups I have attended, there seemed to be this sense of urgency among the participants - urgency to get their point of view across, urgent to be heard, urgent to answer the challenge leveled at their pet theory.

Many people either had "the answer" or were looking for one. It was an intellectual discussion, which I do enjoy, yet I found I was seeking to hear people's experience of wrestling with the question more than the answers they had found. For a while, I sat there inwardly criticizing them for being too much into theory instead of experience, and busily putting together a compelling argment for why they should not try to prove things. Even when the paradox of that struck me, I found it hard to give up.

And I thought to myself, what would a meeting be like if everyone stopped trying to draw conclusions, and just experienced each other's life instead? Would we all just sit there and stare at each other? How would we talk? Could we still ponder the mysteries of life without aiming to come out of meeting having decided who was right and who was wrong?

Yes - I have experienced that, and I know it is possible. It is the yin of conversation rather than the yang - it is the listening instead of the talking. It is talking just enough so that we can listen to the experience of others, rather than listening just enough so we can talk about our own ideas.

Seeking meaning through rational discourse is a bit like Barry Manilow singing "I write the song", which was written by Bruce Johnston.

I have had enough of theory. I crave touching someone's soul, and having their soul touch mine. I long to reconnect to the intimate web I was born into, the mystical world of connection with everything in me and around me.

"Out beyond right and wrong there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
Doesn't make any sense." - Rumi

Awakening to Meaning

2006-06-10T17:47:00.000-04:00

We wake up from the sleep of pre-birth and find ourselves in a world of feeling, mystery, rich with significance. Things around us and in us make us cry, become afraid, become happy, curious, angry. What we experience is meaningful to us from day one.

Yet, as adults, we research the world and study the laws of science, the mechanics of the universe, and discover to our dismay, that meaning is not there. The world appears fairly mechanical, operating by cause and effect. Even the study of our own brains results in a mechanistic explanation, and the study of our emotions yields an understanding of hormones and brain activity. No where in this scenario is there any purpose, any meaning, anything that explains the deep experiences we have, and continue to have, throughout our lives.

Many reach the logical conclusion that there is no meaning, and we must either invent one and live in pretense, or accept there is none and live a life of contradiction to what we believe. Others believe that meaning is defined by an authoritarian God, who simply decrees it into existence. Neither alternative is very comfortable.

A shift has happened in us when we became rational beings, during the pre-teen years - we started to look to logic instead of experience as the source of truth. Originally, we had a set of experiences, and we found various theories we learned or overheard helped us categorize and make sense out of our experience. But eventually, the theories became the truth, and we started judging our experience according to what we believed, and rejecting experience that did not fit.

When we lose experience, we become adrift in a world of rationality, cut off from our core being, the being that experiences. We ask, "Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? What meaning does my life have?" But there are no logical answers to these questions that truly satisfy. If I say I am the product of random forces that began with the big bang, that gives me no comfort in feeling I belong here on the earth. If I say my purpose is to be happy, or to satisfy my desires, it seems pretty useless to pursue pleasure, education, fame or money for this person who will be dead in 50 years. To what end do we do these things? If I say my meaning comes from my religion or God, then what of others who believe differently?

One cannot derive "ought" from "is". One can look at all the facts of the physical world, and probe the depths of brain neurology, and study the history of evolution, but never can we take a set of facts and derive a statement of "should" from them. Morality, value, purpose, meaning, are all inherently unreachable if one starts from the world of facts and reason.

Yet we all had a sense of meaning once. When we were born, we didn't question why we were there. We were intimately connected with our little universe, instantly reacting to stimuli, deeply connected in a web of objects, sensations, feelings, reactions, expression of our inward selves, instantly responding and interacting with living beings and caretakers. We were part of the web of life.

When we became convinced that logic led to truth, we lost that connection - we lost the intimacy we had with the universe, and lived in the world of facts and beliefs. And one cannot start at reason and arrive at living. We can experience a proof, but we cannot prove an experience.

What then? How do we discover the meaning of life? The answer does not lie in any rational statement, because that will never touch the soul. The answer cannot be arbitrarily chosen if it is to be real. The answer can only arise spontaneously out of experience, like sexual desire arises from our bodies.

I look at a sunset, and I do not conclude there is meaning - I discover it. I discover that the colors fascinate me, that the scene moves me, that my thoughts spontaneously wander around the world's bigness and my smallness, around how life can be full of amazing beauty that appears without anyone's effort. I did not decide there was meaning; rather, I stood before the world and discovered that meaning was there. There is no deduction here, nor induction - there is only spontaneous discovery.

It may take us years to discover a meaning for our individual lives, for we are much more complex than a sunset, much more wonderful, much more paradoxical and mysterious. But when we stand fully and honestly before our lives, and really see ourselves, we will eventually see the meaning that is there.

Comment posted by Gene
at 6/18/2006 9:28:00 PM
A beautiful poem, Alex. I look forward to your comments also.

Comment posted by Alex
at 6/13/2006 7:45:00 PM
Gene,

While I'm considering how to respond, I leave you with this:

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/It_Was_Like_This.html

Alex

Comment posted by jaiamma
at 6/12/2006 10:16:00 AM
Hi Gene, I found this post of yours to be very meaningful... (smile) My experience: "Everyone wants to be happy. No one wants to suffer." (the Dalai Lama). People who are experiencing suffering search for meaning. People who are free from suffering don't. Note I distinguish between suffering and pain. Suffering is not just the ups and downs of everyday life, but fundamentally human suffering is being burdened with the deep belief (felt in the body, emotions and mind) that who we are is limited to our fragile, mortal bodies and our personality (often dysfunctional).

Any "meaning" of life derived from intellectual analysis is like trying to find sweetness by licking a sheet of paper with the word "honey" written on it.

There have been brief moments in my life when I've experienced deep bliss. In those moments I and everything was and felt perfect, complete and deliciously beautiful. If, in those moments, someone had asked me "What's the meaning of life?" I would have laughed and said "Look at that tree! Look at that child! Look at that old beggar! Can't you see its all perfect and blissful just as it is? That's the "meaning" of life; this amazing present moment just as it is. Why search for something that is already here? Its like a fish searching for water."

So, Gene, I'm in joyful agreement with your primary points. That the "meaning" of life is found when we deeply experience the present moment just as it is, without judgment. Its beautiful that people search for the meaning of life because they are really searching for who they truly are (beyond mental concepts). Everyone wants to be happy, and everyone eventally will discover that true, unconditional happiness (meaning) is only found when they realize they are the whole cosmos; are the Divine Presence. They are not little vulnerable egos that will disappear into dust.

For me, the meaning of life is a felt experience in the body and emotions, not any kind of concept or philisopical notion. The nice thing about having those moments of bliss is that when I'm in my suffering (which is most of the time) I still feel that the "meaning" of life is this present moment. That feeling is a continual remnant or residue of my bliss experiences. I response to the question about why God allows suffering, one great sage said "I like suffering. It brings me closer to God." So, if approached with the right attitude, suffering can dissolve the ego rather than reinforce it.

The search for meaning in life is really just the search for the end of suffering. That completely defines my life; the search for the end of suffering. That search fills me to the brim with meaning & purpose. As I grow, this search is simply about accepting and surrendering to each moment just as it is (especially my pain). Continual opening of the heart is the meaning of life. Suffering ends when my feeling that I am a separate self dissolves. 99% of the time I feel separate. But that 1% has seeped deeply into the rest of my life.

I deeply appreciate Gene how you're exploring these big questions and turning the light of your awareness right back into your own being, searching for your true self. Being an optimist, I feel that as the world evolves, more and more people will engage in that search as they discover that excessive material pleasures don't bring true happiness.

Charles

2006-06-07T19:55:00.000-04:00

I just found out that my friend Charles, about whom I've written twice before, died on Sunday. Recurrent pnemonia apparently finished the process that was inevitable anyway.

Death is the strangest thing. How can a person simply cease to exist?? If a tree is cut down, there is a wood pile, or sawdust, or rotting trunks on the ground. And of course the physical body of Charles still exists. But the spirit - the voice, personality, ideas, experiences of his life, his memories - all have suddenly vanished without a trace. We will never know anything more of what it was like to be Charles than we know at this moment, and even that will fade over time.

Here I can see the essence of spirit quite clearly. Don't talk to me about the personality just being a very complex set of neural connections, or that everything is ultimately arrangements of molicules - that does not explain what has happened here. Something spiritual has happened; something we call a spirit is no longer there. It is not a "thing" that has gone - it is a capability, a capacity to touch my life, to teach me from years of experience and from a bank of wisdom accumulated at great price. I no longer can stare into his eyes and feel the thrill of words coming from a person with very different life experiences than mine. I can no longer have my vision expanded by his particular point of view. I can no longer listen to him disrupt the chapel service with his long passionate speeches.

And some day, I will die. How can I fathom that I, not my body, but the thing that feels, experiences, weeps, laughs, thinks - that that thing will be gone? That all I have experienced and today hold as so important, will disappear? That the desire for life itself will no longer be? Who will I be, when I am no longer I? Who was I, before I was me?

I am forced once again to face that great paradox of meaning - why am I here? I have struggled with this question since I started counting the years left instead of the years lived. The task now is, to cease hiding, to cease pretending, and to wrestle with what is, allowing the dance between this thing we call reality and the thing I call me, to shape me and my philosophy as it will.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/9/2006 8:04:00 AM
Gene,
This one so much touched me especially with knowing several people pending death and also Charles now gone.

I think I feel like this especially when I am in the heart of getting the very thing I have longed to receive -- I feel so inadequate when it is gifted to me.

This poem makes me feel less alone in my struggle.

Heidi

[Panhala]
Life While-You-Wait
Wislawa Szymborska

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it's mine. I can't exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play's all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can't conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back,
stars you'll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run ?
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage).

You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I've done.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

Two Kinds of Anger

2006-06-05T06:45:00.000-04:00

I've been purposely avoiding putting much theory on my blog, because I tend to theorize a lot in my head, and theory does not create intimacy. Yet sometimes it can be invaluable, and this one is an important understanding for me, that might be useful to others.

I've always had issues with anger - other people's and my own. I tend to be terrified of it, and avoid it at all costs. I've suppressed much of my own anger, and have wound up often feeling like a victim and carrying resentment.

From my work with Shalom and other places, I've come to see two different emotions that I have both been calling anger:

- Passion - I may feel strongly about something, such as the war, and express my thoughts with energy. Or someone may be violating or about to violate a boundary of mine, and I say "No!" strongly, with power, with energy. I have often suppressed this energy from being expressed in my life.

- Resentment - I may dislike something that has happened to me, or some situation that I cannot change, and develop an attitude of feeling like a victim, powerless and abused. It may include the desire for vengence, or withdrawal, or the belief that I don't deserve to be happy. I have often indulged in this attitude, and suffered a lot from it.

The psychological technique of emotional release, where one brings an emotion to the surface and expresses it strongly and bodily with the purpose of releasing it, has been controversial in the field of psychology. It is done in co-counseling, primal therapy, in Shalom work, in Pathwork, in the Mankind Project, and many other systems of healing and growth with great effectiveness, yet many professionals remain against it. I've puzzled over that a lot, because it has been very effective for me. This distinction above holds the key for me.

Emotions that are habitual attitudes are strengthened the more they are practiced. Emotions that have been suppressed and are brought into our awareness give us a new option that we were resisting before. Those of us who habitually feel rage, or resentment, or sadness, or powerlessness, are not people who need to practice those emotions - we need to practice new options, new ways of looking at life, new ways of reacting to situations. Those of us who have denied the existence of certain emotions, or suppressed the expression of them, need to understand why we are cutting off part of who we are, and one method of understanding is to get us to experience it and see what we have been resisting.

What I have resisted is personal power - the kind of anger that rises up when my boundaries are being crossed, and say "No!" What I have taken on as a habitual attitude is the kind of anger that is a smouldering resentment, a feeling that I've been had, an inability to let go of the past or see life from a new angle.

This frees me to change. When I discover resentment within me, I can try on a different attitude without fearing I am "suppressing my anger" - a big no-no in psychology. Likewise, when I feel strongly about something that is not as I think it should be, I can express strength and passion without being cruel or vendictive, and that is an attitude I need to practice, since I am resistant to it.

The point in looking inside is to free ourselves, not create more rules. The point is freedom - to have more options, not fewer.

Your thoughts are welcome - I'd appreciate hearing what others think.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/5/2006 10:02:00 AM
Wow!

You've covered a heck of a lot of ground in a few short statements - my head is spinning!

I feel like I want to expound on each sentence and point out that there's a lot more to it! But I think you are making a point only on how we process our anger regardless of the source of any particular situation.

If I am personally resentful about a relationship or work or community issue, I've been developing a new way of dealing and it is working! You talked about changing our mental processes to get rid of old anger patterns. My counselor said this is a fairly new concept in the psychological world. The old world required us to dig into childhood issues to heal the root cause but it also believe that many of our habits were hard-wired. The new thinking has discovered that our minds can create new neural-paths to our thinking processes when we practice and eventually by-passing the old thinking habits will become natural thru practice. I find this very encouraging.

I look inside myself to find what my desired longer-term goal is and then I try to overlook the small annoyances in favor of grooming my thoughts for my larger goals. I've spent a lot of year getting to this newer place of thinking and it is working for me - like you said. Rethinking old ways of being angry so that we can better serve our deeper goals which are usually a desire for being understood and for connecting somehow.

You also pointed out that a lot of our feelings are not conscious and we tend to go on automatic in our rages and "pet peeves". Are you saying that a sign to watch for is a routine in our angry thinking? That is, if it feels routine, it is probably an old record and most probably no longer valid?

My fear in all this heady stuff is that in practicing positive thought patterns, I might be going into denial or suppressing feelings that will come back later in my head - with a vengeance. I am not entirely confident that I am doing it correctly, so I have this underlying fear that I'm missing the point.

No one's coming

2006-06-04T18:22:00.000-04:00

I played piano a lot as a child. I found in the world of music a way that I could express the unexpressable inside of me. No one would tell me, "Don't be sad. Don't be angry" when I played sad or angry music. Somehow, music escaped the judgments and limitations placed on other expressions of feeling in our house.

When I played piano on a summer day, a fantasy would always come to mind. Someone who knew much more about music than anyone in my family or our social circle would be walking down the street, and hear my sound drift through the windows, and would stop and listen in amazement. "Someone in that house is a genius!", they would say; "Someone doesn't know the gifts he has! They need to be discovered!". And they would come in, and whisk me away to a musical school where I would be trained, and my genius would be discovered, and I would become world-renoun, and finally recognized as having something of value inside of me.

As an adult, I have a similar alternate fantasy. There is an island I periodically swim to - it is unknown, and involves hiking to a deserted part of a river, swimming across the river, climbing up rocks and down a deep slope on the other side, and there I can lay in the sun in total isolation and peace. I would do this journey, and then imagine some beautiful woman would come along, discover me, and make love to me in the sun and the wildness.

The odd thing is that I first make myself totally unreachable, and then hope that someone will reach me.

A mother would do that. If a child was lost in the woods, she would search day and night, climb over every hill, call on everyone she could think of to help, and would not give up until all hope was gone. One of the comforts of being a child in a loving family is you can try as hard as you want to hurt your parents, or destroy your world, or isolate, or be obnoxious, or become unreachable, and the parent's love and patience will always overcome the distance you create. Love will always win out. And some of us, since we did not get that at home, are still trying to get it as adults. Unfortunately, as adults, we are far more capable of hiding and isolating ourselves, of creating barriers to intimacy, of sitting in victimhood and resentments, and we can succeed, if not in actually stopping love, in preventing ourselves from experiencing love, sometimes for the rest of our lives.

This weekend, I realized that no one is coming. I can make the difficulty of getting through my barriers so difficult that no one will ever succeed. I can create a world so full of victimization that no one could ever convince me I am loved. That I can sit as a victim forever on my isolated hilltop, waiting for someone to come along and save me from myself. And that I am now poweful enough that no one can tear me away from my own insistance.

The thought of letting go of my defenses is terrifying. I've been hurt too many times. I don't want to be fooled again. Each mere glance causes years of hurt and betrayal to flare up before my eyes, and once again, I feel betrayed, and withdraw more.

Yet no one is coming. No one can save me from myself. I will be all alone unless *I* take down the walls and do not make it so difficult.

It is my choice whether or not to know love.

I am here

2006-06-02T07:50:00.000-04:00

I'm at Shalom Mountain once again, the last in a series of four advanced leadership training classes. I arrived warmly welcomed, as I have gotten used to, and glad to see everyone again.

Joy, one of the leaders, started by talking about how supportive our community is. I was immediately triggered and went into anger and withdrawal for the evening. It took me until this morning to figure out what that was all about.

My family was less than ideal. Over time, I have developed a picture in my mind of what that ideal family would have looked like, and have been unconsciously trying to recreate it in the communities I have built. But nothing ever matches up to my ideal, and I am always dissatisfied. When Joy talked about us being a community, I immediately compared Shalom to my ideal, and it was sadly lacking. "Why don't people call me? Why doesn't anyone offer to lead a retreat with me? Where are they when I need them? This is no community!" I spent the rest of the evening withdrawn, perhaps "punishing" them for not meeting my standards.

This morning, I thought again about my happy dog meditation that I wrote about before. If I was a dog, I would not be comparing them to some ideal. I would not have expectations. I would notice I was with people who were happy, and who hugged me. I would notice that there was good things to eat and fun things to do. I would be happy for what is.

I thought about my relationships. I get angry when people aren't as I think they should be. I want those close to me to provide the perfect family I never had. If I looked at what I actually have, and don't compare it to what I think should be, it's pretty good. There's a lot to enjoy.

Our capacity to remember the past and create the future is wonderful, astounding, and indespensible. Yet, at times, that ability interferes with our ability to actually see and feel what is around us in this moment. I can easily act according to past spectors and future demands instead of present realities, and it often makes me miserable.

But at long last, I am here. I just took a shower, and my body feels fresh. Breakfast is waiting, and friendly, loving people surround me. Forget these idealistic visions of community - at least, for the moment. Right now, now is the place to be.

Biking to Blacksberg

2006-05-30T23:39:00.000-04:00

My 19-year old son announced two weeks ago that he was moving to Blacksburg. He announced a few days later that he was biking there. He's never biked more than a few hours on an afternoon. After a few cautionary remarks about building up for such a trip, I succumed to his passion, and he took off on a new bike with a new tent and other various accessaries that I helped him buy.

He arrived safely in Blacksburg Monday evening, after 7 days on the road. He's got his own web log where he wrote up his trip - http://along.4t.com/cgi/wp/index.php

A friend heard him remark, "My dad lets me make my own mistakes!" Sometimes I feel like I didn't do too bad. :-)

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 5/30/2006 11:02:00 PM
I wonder what your son likes about Blacksburg--scenery, people he knows there? I hope he's just kidding about Hitler/Naziism. Andy

Playa del Fuego trip report

2006-05-30T17:59:00.000-04:00

Okay, a simple "here's what I did" blog entry, instead of my usual philosophic wanderings. I went to Playa del Fuego last weekend - a smaller east coast version of Burning Man. I heard rumors that people got wasted a lot, and pictured avoiding piles of puke, and people unable to carry on a conversation, but I went anyway - mainly because nudity was allowed, and I love being able to walk around outside with nothing between me and the sky.

Luckily, the event was not what I feared, and I had a great time. There was a lot of alcohol and some marijuana, but people were generally very outgoing, connective, huggy, and not of the get wasted and make a fool of yourself variety. There was only one incident of inappropriate behavior I saw - many women got hit on by this one guy who asked them if he could play with their breasts, or other things - he was reported and quickly kicked out, which made me feel there were good boundaries at the camp.

It struck me a lot like a pagan festival, with some differences. There were no workshops (one person said, there was no pretending interest in going to workshops). There was a lot of creativity present - wonderful structures, artwork, inventive themes, music, that people obviously spent months preparing, just for this festival.

I was totally bummed when I first came in, because I did not see one person without clothes, not even topless, and really didn't want to be the only one at a new place I knew nothing about. My solution was to have Beth paint a pair of shorts on my naked body, so I might appear clothed unless someone actually looked closely - that was fun. But as the temperature climbed, many more joined my preferred dress style, and I was very comfortable.

There were some events, includng a very well-done stage event by "the zombies", including many pieces from various musicals, done quite well as solos or choir - they obviously put months of work into it. These were not just partyers - they were artists and free thinkers.

The group is really a bunch of pyromaniacs - everything had to do with fire. They would build elaborate huge pieces of art, then burn them while everyone stood around, watching and cheering. Sunday night was the big burn - a pony on top of a pile of lumber the size of a small house! It was very well done - the pony was made of something that lasted about 15 minutes in the intense heat, so that you periodically saw its black siloutte through the flames. The heat was so intense the crowd had to stand a huge distance away. There were fire marshals present, and they were both serious as well as very fun and into it. They danced and joked. After about 10 minutes into the burn, one of them said through a loud speaker, "The fire is now over. You all must return to your tents! Please evacuate the area at once! And those of you who were waiting for the pony ride, we have some bad news..." Everyone just laughed and kept enjoying the fire.

There were dozens of fire spinners, all different kinds, doing tricks I'd never seen before - fire on chains, on huge batons, on finger wands, spinning all arround their bodies, some of them naked. Very impressive. I think the most impressive was a guy on stilts with a huge baton lit on both ends. While he performed, he reached down and set his own stilts on fire! They were nicely designed to only burn a certain distance, but it was very impressive.

People did really crazy, fun things with their bodies, and I let myself go exhibitionistic, and had a blast. People were dancing on top of a bus, and I got up there and danced where the whole camp could see me. For the big burn in the evening, I got these glow necklaces and wrapped them around my balls - it got a lot of stares and laughs, and I loved it. I danced around the fire like that, and had a great time. Some people like to set fire to things; others like to whip each other, others like to spend their lives in monestaries - and I like to run around naked. I felt really free to have my little kink, and still be accepted by the group there. May we all always find a place where we can safely satisfy our curious desires.

Sunday I spent some time trying to connect with my group, and repair some of the damage from being a space cadet on Saturday and ignoring everyone - I felt like I succeeded in connecting with many of them. They are a group that has been together for years, and goes to many events, especially 4 Quarters Farm, where I haven't been for a long time. The leader especially liked me and welcomed me into their group, and hoped I would do more things with them. It felt good, although I don't know how may other events I want to fit into my schedule.

Saturday night I didn't sleep at all - noise and very bumpy ground, so I left late Sunday night after the big burn. It was SO good to sleep in a real bed after just one night of misery on the ground.

The camp belongs to the vietnam vets motorcycle club, so there were all these stereotypical guys in jeans jackets with sewn on emblems, and big motorcycles, on one side of the camp, kind of sitting there and staring at us. They were friendly, but didn't mix much. It was an odd sight.

That's it - my decadent weekend before I had to go back to programming for the government. They asked me how my weekend was, and I just said, "fine", and smiled.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 6/3/2006 5:18:00 AM
I’ve been pricked by some of the comments in this thread from my own female experience in getting hit on and getting seduced. David has a point in that it does depend on whether the sexual approach is coming from someone potentially desirable or repulsive and that usually comes from my own unconscious gut feeling. So, in a way, I think a person who makes advances is vulnerable to unexpected consequences if his motives are truly harmless. But how is the woman to know what the motives of a stranger may be?

When I worked the Renn Fest, we also had a system set up to collar potential molesters and, if needed, remove them from the festival and it happened every single day. The festival is deliberately full of sexual innuendos, open teasing and flirting everywhere, so drawing the line between safe and harmful is extremely important and an art in itself.

I agree with David that ideally there is no harm in asking for favors. But there should also, ideally, be no harm in saying no. Here’s where I get confused. If the guy asks and the woman is offended, then who becomes the victim and who is the perpetrator now? If the woman were not offended, neither would be at odds, whether the answer were yes or no. If the guy persists beyond the answer, then he has made himself into a victim by his own perpetrations. It can get pretty messy in any case.

And for us by-standers, we get to draw our own judgments of how we feel about the scene and how we imagine we would have behaved in the matter.

So I’m commenting from the sidelines also with some emotion because there were times when I would have liked a big brother to get me out of a situation and there were other times when I was really proud of myself handling a request from a scary flirt and ending up with a friend instead of an enemy.

David asked some pressing questions [who is it you are protecting? Is it working? Who is it that is being shamed? Is that working?]

I really don’t see shame in asking someone to correct their behavior if it frightens people - and if the person honestly had no intent of harm. And leadership roles can only offer directives. None of us have control over how another person chooses to respond .

At what point do I decide that a place is too dangerous for me for fear of harm? At what point do I fear to ask for what a I want because I might get excluded for my asking? Where do I fit in any given community?

Comment posted by Gene
at 5/31/2006 7:32:00 PM
David, there's a lot of energy in your response. I have merely reported what happened and expressed my approval. You are welcome, of course, to disagree with me, but your offense is not my doing.

There are social norms to be considered. While social norms are not necessarily moral edicts, a wise man will consider what effect his actions will have when he breaks them. Social norms are often relative. Your distinction between asking permission and entering a tent is your own - many would draw the line elsewhere, and in this case, obviously did. The man in question apparently misjudged the consequences of his actions, and subsequently paid the price. That is not a condemnation, merely observation.

Comment posted by David
at 5/31/2006 7:22:00 AM
Gene,
Your final question is the key. You ask what the line of responsibility is when person a upsets person b. Implied in the question is that person a is some how in charge of person b's upset. I believe person a can be responsible for what they say and do, but not the effects it has on others. So if person a is goofy, ugly, has a big nose, a scarey face, gets nervouse when he talks, he is responsible for all these things to the extent that he has some control, but it is not his responsibility that people make up that he is dangerous, weird, preverted or frightening.

Gene, I can imagine a nudist having judgements about your painted on shorts and another person feeling your nakedness itself violated their sense of safety or appropriateness. If you are responsible for their emotions and reactions, shouldn't you be thrown out of the event? If the standard is inappropriate or weird behavior, then the jury has no repsonsibility but to make stuff up and gang up on someone. For me, we're better off with a standard that has to do with a actual violation rather than perceived violation. Going into a tent or lifting a skirt without asking are actual violations. Asking for permission to do those things is the behavior we want. You once came to a party here dressed as a large cock. Most people enjoyed it. Some probably thought it was inappropriate or may have experienced it as a violation. Upon learning that someone finds it weird or threatening, should I have thrown you out?

If there is an awkward man who has trouble communicating about his sexuality and he goes to a hippie gathering and asks people for permission to touch them and gets in trouble for that and gets thrown out, what happens to his frustrration level. How will he get his needs met. By shaming him for asking rather than doing, do we not help create a predator who does not ask before he acts?

Gene, who is it you are protecting? Is it working? Who is it that is being shamed? Is that working?

Did these women get supported in being victims or empowered? Did they learn that boundaries are something external that others look after to protect them or did they learn to separate boundaries from their own judgements and express clearly what they did and did not want. Did this man get supported in honest expression or looped back into a cycle of shame?

What are your responsibilities as a leader?

If I ask you for a blow job, and you have me ridiculed by the group, I see punishing sanctions, but is that a clear boundary. What happened to the option or responsibility to say, "No."

Let's say you go to a meditation. Afterwards you ask a woman to go home with you. SHe finds it inappropriate, thinks you are weird, tells everyone that your were inappropiately hitting on her. When the medition group leader uninvites you to future events, would you have me celebrate the "groups boundaries"?
David

Comment posted by Gene
at 5/30/2006 9:33:00 PM
It did strike me a bit like a Rainbow Gathering, but not as drugy, and better organized. You can get info for the next one at http://playadelfuego.org .

Comment posted by Gene
at 5/30/2006 9:31:00 PM
Yes, there was more I didn't mention. The requests were done of women who were comlete strangers to him, approached in their tents or other places where they were alone. He also lifted skirts, commented on what kind of underwear women were wearing (or not), asked if he could watch someone while he jerked off, etc. I only witnessed one incident where he went under the skirt of someone, but I heard tales from several women of other adventures. He apparently upset several dozen women in a very short period of time. His behavior was definitely not within expected norms.

Perhaps the deeper question is, where is the line of responsibility drawn when person A upsets person B?

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 5/30/2006 9:25:00 PM
Gene, I've heard of "Burning Man", and now, thanks for telling us about "Playa Del Fuego" and your experience there. Please tell us about it ahead of time next year so we can go if we wish; is there a website? I used to go to the hippie-like Rainbow Gatherings, where nudity abounds. And I agree with dealing with inappropriate behavior appropriately. Andy

Comment posted by David
at 5/30/2006 8:49:00 PM
Gene,
I'm scratching my head over this one. Are you really saying you celebrate the fact that the organizers threw someone out for asking permission to touch breasts?

What is it you prefer? That he hide his desires? That he hide his sexuality? That he cosmically know who does or doesn't want their breasts touched?
Or should he assume that all women don't want their breasts touched? Or should he recognize he is unwanted and assume that no woman would want to have a lowlife like HIMself touch their breasts. Should he just give up on a sex life? Not all people have the great people skills that you do Gene. What would you have them do, when they are horny and don't know what the other person desires?

I'm quite riled up over this and yet, there must be more to the story. My soap box is making creaking noises as I jump up and down.

Please tell me there is some information missing in this report.

"There was only one incident of inappropriate behavior I saw - many women got hit on by this one guy who asked them if he could play with their breasts, or other things - he was reported and quickly kicked out, which made me feel there were good boundaries at the camp. "

The Present of Life

2006-05-23T21:27:00.000-04:00

Last weekend at Shalom Mountain, I was on a high Saturday night. I was really loving being among all these enlightened, intelligent people who were aware of themselves, could own their stuff, could really hear each other, and who were loving and open. I felt so lucky to be there and to be absorbing this energy.

But Sunday morning, for unknown reasons, my mood shifted. As we sat in the closing circle, I listened to the overwhelming gratitude people had for the weekend and for Shalom, and how there was no other place like Shalom - and I sat grumpy, saying to myself, "What on earth are they talking about? Did I miss something? Geesh, what's so wonderful about it? It's just another retreat center like all the others. Why are you all making such a big deal about it?"

The contrast in my moods couldn't have been greater. But it was not only my mood that had shifted, but the beliefs I was entertaining. And I caught myself red-handed - I remembered that I had felt another way just last night, and today I was building walls to separate myself emotionally before our parting.

I've had to deal with mood swings much of my life, and lately I learned a new way of handling them. When I find myself with two contradicting realities, I can usually discover which one is the real one by this rule: The voice that never changes, that repeats itself over and over, that never has anything new to say, is a dead voice. It doesn't learn, or take in new information, or alter its opinion. But the voice that shifts, and learns, and grows, and changes - that voice is alive and real, and interacting with the real world, ever learning, ever growing.

The voice in my head Sunday morning had been there a million times before, and was always the same - cynical, separating, judgmental. It had nothing new to say. The voice Saturday night was amazed by what I had seen, and saw anew a bit of what I wanted my path and future to be. It was alive and growing and present.

I believe that our lives consist of the summation of all the moments we are present. All of the moments we are not in the present, we are either rehearsing the past, or rehearsing the future. In other words, they are just reruns - we've thought them before, and repeating them adds nothing to our lives. And I wonder, how much have I actually lived in my life? Ten years? Five? And how can I start to live more of my life each day that is left to me, filling it with new awareness?

Shalom Mountain

2006-05-23T18:45:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, I was at Shalom Mountain for the third session of Shalom Retreat Leadership Training, where I learn more of the secrets of leading a Shalom Retreat. I've been talking about "The Mountain", as it is called, for a couple of years, so I thought I'd try to show a bit of it.

Never having done much with pictures - in fact, having a real block against them - I decided to try taking some of the trip, which is 6 hours from the DC area to the Catskills.

The drive is long, but when I get to Pennsylvania, the scenary repays me for some of the tediousness of the road. There are lots of small lakes along the route, along with bridges, quaint little towns, and lots of trees.

Finally, the magical house where it all takes place. This has been the site of Shalom workshops and retreats for 30 years. You can read about the history of it at shalommountain.com.

Inside, it is homey and friendly. Hugs are plentiful, long, and deep wherever you happen to bump into someone.

The atmosphere is loving, casual, and you feel at home easily. But the work is serious. Much of the philosophy is Jungian, but we do readings from many authors, from Ken Wilber to Starhawk. Types of workshops range from individual/family/couple/young people to sexuality/gay/lesbian/spirituality/Body Sacred. The leadership training I am in is for the "Shalom Retreat", the basic core workshop of Shalom that focuses on moving individuals through their blocks so they can live a fuller and more loving life.

I have one more weekend of training before this phase is over.

I will write about what I learned last weekend in a separate post. Hope you enjoyed this.

Comment posted by Roger Telschow
at 5/23/2006 10:08:00 PM
You did a nice job capturing some of the 'magic' that is Shalom Mountain, Gene. Thanks for the posting!

The Human Experience

2006-05-21T10:47:00.000-04:00

Last night I went to a meditation where we watched a video of Wayne Dyer. He impressed me, appearing very different than when I had read "Pulling Your Own Strings" years ago. His heart seemed pure and egoless, and the truths he spoke of were mostly things I have been learning over the past few years in my life.

Yet I was restless. We sat around discussing ideas of letting the past go, living in the present. There is something ironic in discussing being present, in using symbols and concepts to talk about what is right in front of us and all around us. It struck me that so many of us who are interested in new age spirituality have gotten these concepts down, and can discuss them intelligently, and debate which concept is most useful - yet, as Dyer said, it is in the living that it matters, not in the discussion. I've heard and understood great deep truths from many authors; but only occassionally, does one of them actually strike something inside and transform my life. Are we just accumulating doctrines to form a new religion?

People from all ages are all faced with the same thing - life, this experience of being human. And it is within each of us to approach it with awareness and an open heart, no matter what religion, age, society, or lack thereof, we come from. I long to share my experience, and hear the experience of others, as they touch life/god/reality/the present. How can words ever define this morning, as I lay naked in the sun in my back yard, watching the dark and light leaves quiver against a deep blue sky? I can describe it, but only if you have already experienced something similar to it will you have a clue what I am talking about. It is our experience, not our concepts, that constitute life.

I lay there this morning thinking about disappointments, and dreams I was in the process of giving up, and the desires and hopes and wishes I had to juggle against the steely wall of reality. But then the sun broke through, and I became lost in the sensuality of my surroundings. I realized that in this moment, all my needs were met. I was fully satisfied. Only when I thought of what I wanted tomorrow did I experience restlessness.

Can I experience pleasure without grasping onto it, becoming afraid I won't have it again, or as often as I want? Can I experience pain without clinging to it long after it is gone, seeking care for wounds already closed? Can I have my experience of being human on this earth without making it my identity, without losing site of my true essence, the thing I was before I left the garden of Eden and wandered into the human world?

And who is this essence that I am? This essence is what I want to get to know.

Comment posted by Heidi
at 5/22/2006 11:59:00 AM
I have also had my judgements about sitting around and talking about living experiences, wondering how many of us actually went home and practiced what we considered so highly precious. I admit that I find myself weak in the practice.

And are we practicing a new religion? I kind of agree to that with a grin. After all, if a person wants to change their heart and soul and connect with like-minded people, it almost becomes a practice or religion with new doctrines attached. For this part, I try very hard to keep my faith in focus so I do not confuse what I believe with what I am experimenting with in life.

But the one thing I have learned to value deeply is the privilege of joining like-minded people whenever a gathering occurs and re-enforcing good life values and practices together. I may be weak from time to time, but having good friends who support similar values helps me come back to myself in the 'now' and "know" that I am not alone in this quest.

Thanks for reminding me of these values, Gene.

Honoring Primitive Energies

2006-05-10T14:43:00.000-04:00

I was leaving a parking lot today, being very careful as I backed out, looking both directions, checking several times to be sure someone behind me was not also backing out, moving slowly, calculating my distance. As someone who spends his days carefully making sure programs did what they were supposed to do, and did not go outside of their proscribed bounds, I was getting irritated with the necessity of always being cautious, and indulged in the fantasy of gunning it, smashing into the cars behind me, and taking off in a blur.

Of course, my civilized self won out, and I continued carefully down the asphalt path, staying within the white lines, only doing the procribed speed limit plus whatever else I thought I could get away with, but not more. Careful, careful, careful.

Every part of us needs expression. The carefree child inside of me, who used to be able to do almost anything and not get hurt, needs a place to come out periodically. Back then, adults made sure I was in a safe world where I would not hurt myself until I could develop my own restrictions and not be limited by their rules. But when the restrictions become the focus, my inner child either rebels or dies. My freedom, chaos, and lack of control need a safe place to be expressed.

So does my anger. Anger is not useful when talking to the boss or the policeman who stopped me for speeding. But if I never express my anger, either I lose life's vital passion, or some day I will explode.

It seems as adults, we learn a new way, a way that allows us to better achieve our goals and dreams - but the lower chakra energies of sexuality, creativity, passion, need, destructiveness, aggression are truly a part of us. Our fantasies, magical thinking, impossible desires are a part of us. Perhaps our dark side with its fearful powers, its desires to be malicious, uncaring, controlling, sadistic, also need a safe outlet.

Our primitive side is nothing to be ashamed of or try to kill off; rather, it is a vital part of our very being, part of what makes us alive, what gives us passion, what makes us the beautiful, complex creatures we are.

I think I'll go out and run naked through the woods, screaming.

Comment posted by Sandra
at 5/23/2006 11:57:00 AM
Freeheart - I have just revisited your page after a while away and I love your postings here. I felt compelled to comment on our "primitive selves." I have only recently (in the last few years) come to know, and accept, and embrace, and 'hold up to the light' my most primitive self. This self keeps me grounded, is sometimes dark, is sometimes not 'civil' or 'correct,' but is most always brutally truthful. Presently, I am in the process of trying to always honor that piece (even if it's not convenient!), and it's been (so far) a fascinating journey!! Just a comment!!!

Bliss

2006-05-08T09:18:00.000-04:00

Yet another wonderful weekend for me - I attended the International Primal Association's Spring Retreat. This is the second year I have gone.

Last year, I went through a lot of withdrawal, as I often do in groups that are run by someone other than me. I have a hard time finding my place in a group, as just a group member, and not a leader, and tend to go through issues of belonging, of wanting to be liked, of feeling different, and so on. It didn't happen this time - I flowed in with the people immediately, and felt connected.

Saturday night, I went into a state of bliss that lasted until the ride home yesterday. I think it was partially induced by a wonderful evening of dancing, the connections, and maybe my tiredness. In that state of bliss, I find it so easy to love other people. Everyone looks beautiful to me, and I feel expansive, fully connected, fully loved and loving. I have been entering a state of bliss more frequently in the last few months, as I tune in to the places that feed my soul, and open myself to the energy that is there.

Sunday morning, as we were doing our "mat track", where everyone spends time alone or in pairs emoting whatever feelings were up for them, I lay in the sunlight in my bliss, listening to the various emotions being expressed all around me. Were someone to take those sounds seriously, they would think people were in extreme pain, or ready to kill someone, or in the depths of despair. Yet I knew in an hour, everyone would get up, be happy, well-adjusted adults, and carry on with the day.

What occurred to me was this: I go through many emotions in the course of a week. Some times I feel lousy about myself, and have a hard time believing I have ever done anything worthwhile. Sometimes I feel I am wonderful, and the world is wonderful. Sometimes I am angry, or a victim, or frightened, and my beliefs about the world shift every time my emotions shift. Yet, somewhere underneath it all, is an "I" that does not change. There is something that was angry one day and happy the next, and that is the true me, the one having the emotions. Likewise with the people around me, even if they appear angry, or scary, or better than or less than, somewhere underneath the emotions, underneath their actions, is a real person. If I get to know the real person under my emotions, and the real person underneath others' actions, there can be a connection that cannot be shaken.

My state of bliss has passed this morning, yet I am still here, content. I am not my feelings. I am something that has feelings, and when those feelings have passed, I am still here. I do not have to be in a state of bliss to be present in the world; nor does a state of despair mean my value is in question. There is a solidness about that, a groundedness that lands deeply within me.

I want to better get to know this mysterious "I" that lives under the covers of my life, and can also be hidden so deeply underneath the way others present themselves. I suspect this "I" in all of us is really the same.

Happy Dog Meditation

2006-05-04T20:23:00.000-04:00

A month ago, I was at Shalom Mountain, standing naked in the sun on a hill top, and fell into a state of joy and awareness of my surroundings. I let my attention be caught by any movement, any sound, any object. I was in a state of wordless joy for many minutes, and felt alive and at peace. I called it my "Happy Dog Meditation".

Picture a golden lab, fur rippling in the sunlight, alive, full of life. He is happy, tongue hanging, content. A bird passes overhead and his ears go up, his head whips around, and he is fully focused. Then he looks at you, happy again, wanting to play. You pick up a stick, and he goes wild, barking, jumping, eagerly waiting to run wherever you throw it. He whines with anticipation. There is no mind. There are no thoughts, no ponderings. There is no hesitation, no theorizing about the past or planning on the future. Everything is absorbed with eagerness, and he is happy.

So here's how to do the Happy Dog Meditation:

1. Observe everything. Don't control your attention, or focus on something to exclude other things - let everything grab your attention spontaneously, without any plan.

2. Empty your mind. Don't ask, "What was that?" Don't label what you see or hear, not even "Bird!" or "Tree!". Don't wonder why something is as it is. Let your mind rest.

3. Be happy. Let go of everything you think should be different than it is - don't wish for what is not, or resent what is. Be open to what you discover.

How do you know when you are no longer meditating?

1. There are words in your head. Every word will cause a fog to come over your eyes and ears, and you won't observe as clearly as before.

2. Your eyes blur or stop moving. When you are no longer looking or seeing what you are looking at, you have lost the present. Start looking again.

3. You become curious what something is, or why it is, or where it went, or how it might change. All these put limits on what you can see. Shed the limits, and observe.

Happy dog. Good dog.
Rub, rub.
Pant, pant.

A Need For Love

2006-05-03T16:57:00.000-04:00

The weekend stays on my mind. I notice that I make no demands of the people there, nor of the people in the other communities that feed me, as I often do in relationship. I don't insist people be a certain way, or act a certain way, or have a certain attitude.

To be sure, people there don't always meet my standards. If I created a list of the characteristics of my ideal community, none of the groups I am in would measure up. But when I simply experience what is there, and experience what I get out of a given community, I often find much love, joy, contentment. Needs I do not know I have are met, and the needs I think I have, I don't even think about.

My deep craving for love can make me push love away because it doesn't look the way I expect it to look. The moment I think, if only the world were this way, I become a victim, believing that I have a critical need that life is inadequate to meet. Pain we cannot avoid; being a victim is optional. Our scarcity is of our own creation, not the creation that surrounds us.

Giving up the desire to control the love I receive strips me naked. There is no longer protection from the pain of being unloved; nor is there protection from love, when it does come, with its life-altering power.

Being Loved As I Am

2006-05-01T16:14:00.000-04:00

This past weekend I spent at a Beltane retreat that I go to each year, and I came away from it glowing. I realize that I have become part of the community there. I am known, recognized, appreciated, and respected for the individual I am as well as the workshops I do. So many people came to me with nothing but love to give, and I felt completely accepted and loved. It felt like home.

I have a deep need to remember times like this. I also feel a similar love in my own community which has grown up around the gatherings I have had in my home, as well as at Shalom Mountain and a few other places. These are bright spots in my life to warm me when the night grows cold.

Many who have known me at home have been with me through deep struggles with depression, childhood abuse, mood swings, and various relationship issues. I noted with surprise that at Beltane, almost no one knows of my dark times, yet I still feel accepted. I used to feel that someone had to know all my wounds before they would really know me - now I'm seeing that something other than my woundings is shining through, and people love me without knowing my history.

Maybe I no longer need all of my pain in order to go deep. Maybe, finally, I am beginning to let go of being a victim.

The Ticking of the Clock

2006-04-27T07:47:00.000-04:00

Visited my old friend again, the one who may be dying, the one who was a mentor to me. After a long drive and hopes of hearing deep words of wisdom from this man who was facing the end of his life, I found instead confusion and incoherent thoughts. Apparently his mind is going. Even more troubling was the display of his ego - thinking himself better than others, having judgments, anger at others, and a lack of compassion from someone I had come to expect to show me the way of love.

For some reason, I had expected this wise man to become more and more pure as he approached the end, seeing greater and greater truths, understanding life's mysteries in his final days. Instead, his human weaknesses come forth, from the failing of his body to the failing of his mind, and the wisdom it carried is less present than before.

Echart Tolle says we are not our mind. Many religions teach life after death or reincarnation. Yet when the mind is gone, what is left, but a shell of our former glory? There are only twisted dry leaves where there used to be a flower.

I am still time-bound in my view of life. I think everything must have a future purpose, and its presence in the current moment is not sufficient to justify its existence. I think I must accomplish something great in my life, as if being alive today is too trivial to count.

The clock ticks, and we become so accustomed to it that we only take note when it stops.

Comment posted by Gene
at 5/4/2006 8:00:00 PM
When I say that I think everything must have a future purpose, I don't mean that is what I believe - I mean that that is what I catch myself thinking sometimes. I discover that sometimes I act as if I believed that, when I actually don't. It's important to me to discover and stay aware of attitudes like this that tend to live underground instead of in the light of consciousness, so that I can choose my actions with awareness.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/27/2006 9:55:00 AM
P.S. The "anonymous" comment that ends with "which I would do anyway" is from me, but I forgot to say my name at the end--Andy

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/27/2006 9:45:00 AM
I'm surprised to hear you say "I think everything must have a future purpose, and its presence in the current moment is not sufficient to justify its existence. I think I must accomplish something great in my life, as if being alive today is too trivial to count." Of course it's good to live our life taking into account the future, planning for the future, and to accomplish something great, but I would think a guy like you who brought us together for gatherings with discussions, massage, hugging, potluck, hot tub, and other activities, including just enjoying being together, would also believe in living in the moment, of savoring the joys of each present moment. After all, we are always in the present. Maybe I just didn't understand your comment that I quoted. As for an afterlife, I'm skeptical, believing that consciousness is a function of the living body, but to me it doesn't matter; all I can do about it is live this life the right way, which I would do anyway.

Connections and Words

2006-04-24T08:29:00.000-04:00

Talking with a good friend the other night, I experienced a deepening of connection with him. It seemed that as we talked about the ephemeral whisps of feelings about life, connections - things that are so hard to describe with any precision - that each of us recognized in the words a similar experience, and there was precious shared experience between us from our words, so inadequate a carrier of such profound experience. An excitement and satisfaction arose from discovering a kindred spirit, one who seemed to have been where I had been, for at least part of the journey.

Two other people heard our conversaton and joined us. Soon, conjectures, theories and statistics replaced our time of touching each other's soul, and we competed for rightness, for having the stronger argument, for being able to quote sufficient experience to make our theory about our experience appear more valid.

This was a very different experience - one I had had many times throughout my life. There was a male energy, a sense of competition and testing each other's strengths and looking for the weaknesses in each other's arguments. But I found myself deeply missing what had been replaced - a moment of feeling like some of my deepest experiences were actually understood by and shared with another human being. The theories exercised the brain but did not touch the soul. Who I was or what I had experienced was no longer relevant to the conversation - what now mattered was constructing a more correct explanation of the universe.

I felt sad for the change, and for what had been lost. And I felt resentment over a change I had not chosen. Later, I thought to myself, should I have shared my resentment? Like my sadness, that would be exposing something personal about me that could be accepted or rejected. But in the current atmosphere of polemic discussion, I imagined it would spur a discussion of why resentment doesn't serve us, or an attempt to help me get rid of the resentment; and my humble experience of the churning of my stomach would be lost.

Yet I crave intimacy. I want someone to hear my experience of resentment, of feeling lost and unheard. I want someone to know of my great desire to connect as I had connected minutes before, of the amazing sense of coming home I had when the two of us not only had common experiences, but recognized those experiences in each other, and felt a bond as a result.

I left the conversation in confusion over my reactions and resentment. Old voices rose quickly to the surface - "What's wrong with me? Why can't I be more social? There I go, getting angry over nothing again. There I go, wanting to isolate instead of participate again. I'm not accepting everyone as they are. I'm not accepting the situation as it is. Maybe I don't belong here. Maybe I don't fit in." ...and on and on.

After a few hours of these voices, I began to step back and notice what I was experiencing again, rather than seeing the world through its lens, like water to a fish. I noticed I was saying and believing these things, instead of recalling what had actually happened. Immediately, the voices began to fall away, and I was left with sadness, and some frustration that I can't make people act in the way that would fulfill my needs better. My mind has not fully accepted that fact, and is still busily making plans on how I could explain this, and then they would see how wrong they had been and how right I was. And the moment I write this, the trap I am in is apparent to me, and I know I have to let go even more, let go of the demand that others meet my needs in the way I want them met.

Slowly, a sense of freedom builds, as I look over all that happened, and how each of us were just being who we are, and in a sense were each putting ourselves out there as we best knew how. But none of us were listening to the heart of the person spouting his theories - the heart saying, "Hear me. I want to be known and accepted, be part of you. I want you to hear the yearning behind my words, the reason I sit here at all. I only want to be right so that I will be accepted by you, so that I, too, will have that deep connection." Our communication of who we are and what we need often fails us, and into the void rushes the shadow voices, also wanting to be heard and accepted, just as our heart does. Does all of nature cry out for intimacy, or is it just we strange humans with our odd ways? We all do the best with the light that we have. I am left with sadness, but also enough taste of the huge potential we have, to get out of bed and face a new day.

Comment posted by Advait aka Tom
at 4/30/2006 5:06:00 PM
Hey Gene, Tom here. I finally got a moment to read thru this post more thouroghly. Your feelings and clarity on this came thru clearly for me. I really enjoy how you can so effectively translate the flow of your thoughts into the keyboard. Part of the magic you bring to your writings is that you can shed light on subtle and delicate inner dynamics that can easily get lost in the glare of verbal constructions. This is the same balance achieved by all good poets. 1+1=2 is very robust! Its hard to distort. But effective communication of inner feelings & experience is a real art. Each time you, I or others can illuminate & share our inner worlds, perhaps the more present we'll be when similar situations happen in the future. Thanks!

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/26/2006 12:17:00 PM
I believe that it is possible for rationale to take over in the process of connecting for the reason of impressing others how intellectual we can be. It is more like masturbation of the mind. It feels good to sound smart and interesting. Furthermore, it has been my experience that when I am truly listening to someone else I have no need to talk other than to ask for questions that allow for more of that awesome intimacy.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/26/2006 4:17:00 AM
Gene,
I feel a pang of longing from your words. I think you put into words what I often feel - I have talked too much - I have lost that moment of deep touch with the other person. I find myself wanting to get it back by adding more words and I try to talk it all out - and the more I try to explain, the more clumsy I feel.
I think you said it beautifully, that when rationale tries to touch the heart, it loses something of its intimacy.

MAN WAKES UP HAPPY

2006-04-24T07:58:00.000-04:00

AP Apr 24, Vienna - 55-year old Gene Long
woke up today happy.  Living in Vienna,
Virginia, he awoke in his bed this morning
around 7 AM and heard a bird singing
outside his window, and felt happy.

"The sun was shining in my window, and
then I heard this bird singing.  And I noticed
that I really felt content" he said.

The night before, Long had had a party for
friends he had made over the past 18 months
from conducting a gathering, and this was to
be the last gathering for a while.  He called
these people his "family of choice."

"Maybe it was a glow left over from having
all these wonderful friends of mine come
together", he said.  "Or maybe life is just
good, and I don't notice a lot of the time."

Born into an environment where he
experienced abuse and neglect, Long has
had bouts of depression in his adult life, but
he says they have gotten less and less over
time.  He attributes the change to "meds,
good friends in my life, and developing a
relationship with the spiritual."

Eye witnesses at the event said that Long
looked particularly happy in the hot tub,
being stroked by those around him.

"Life is good," Long said, standing tall and
naked in the morning sunlight. "I just feel
glad to be alive."

The Original Sin

2006-04-17T18:47:00.000-04:00

Listening to the raspy voice of an old man on French radio today, I note again how the french seem to like to put realness in their media, raw life with its "is-ness", and how American media is so influenced by the polish of Hollywood.

Something struck me in pondering this daring to put one's naked self out there - that this realness is part of our purpose of life. To shed all the shadow we carry, all the parts of us we are ashamed to expose, that we have not embraced, that we have not dared admit to ourselves, let alone others - it is this shedding of shame of ourselves that causes us to be real, standing bold on the earth in crystal clarity.

Shame of who we are, of what we carry in our shadow, keeps us from allowing others to see us in our fullness, in our light and in our shadow. It is shame that separates us from God, ourselves, and our world. Perhaps this is the original sin - shame itself, the rejection of what is - the illusion that we have sinned, rather than sin itself.

Only when we have no need to hide will we be able to fully face each other.

My Life as Journey to God

2006-04-17T08:49:00.000-04:00

This was a paper I was required to write for my ongoing training at Shalom Mountain, and I thought it might be of interest. I did *not* have a choice as to title! :-) - Gene

My life as journey to God

I would not have said my life was journing towards God a few years ago, as my conception of God was pretty unfavorable. Today, I see God more as life, as what is, as reality, as lack of denial, as awareness. And as such, my journey my entire life has been towards awareness and becoming more awake, towards the life within me, towards being able to tell the difference between reality and my fantasy.

I grew up fundamentalist, and God was a pretty nasty guy - vengeful, fearful, full of wrath. Suspiciously, God seemed awfully similar to my parents. God was not around very much when things were going well, or when I was discovering the world with delight - God seemed more designed to zap me when I strayed outside the invisible electric fence surrounding my little world - I never knew exactly where the line was, and the pain seemed arbitrary and unnecessarily harsh.

I disgarded that concept of God when I was 25, and accepted the only alternative I knew - that the world was mechanical, following the laws of physics, and our minds and emotions were simply extremely complex instances of machines, ultimately with no more meaning than a machine.

Eventually, I saw that certain experiences - a sense of morality, seeking for purpose and fulfillment, etc., - could never be explained by science, even if they were nothing but the results of complex machines - that our experience, no matter what the theory said, was that these things were real and had rules of their own. In short, I started believing in a spiritual world - a world with its characteristics that acted quite independently of the physical world and our ability to predict and infer results. Whether or not it was all just composed of atoms became irrelevant, because whether or not it was, I had to deal with experience, not theory.

Eventually, I started to embrace a new meaning of God. Looking at the universe as experience instead of cause and effect, I discovered I already had an emotional relationship with the universe - I liked some of the things I encountered, didn't like others, and resented some things the universe had given me. I was already emotionally involved. Whether or not there was a God didn't matter; the fact is that I had to deal with what I experienced, and I experienced an emotional relationship with the universe.

Today, I feel that whatever is within me that keeps me searching, seeking, that keeps drawing me towards something higher, that has something to do with God. It is the life force that has moved evolution to this point of conscious creatures slowly waking up and seeking their purpose, and it is the life force that keeps me awake, seeking, alive.

How this affects my work with others, including the Shalom work, is this - I see healing as primarily a coming out of denial, becoming aware of what is inside of us, and embracing not only who we are but also the life force within us, calling us to something higher. God is simply what is, the Great I Am, and becoming honest and aware is to come to know God.

I think everyone has deep within them this pull towards health, wholeness, connection, a sense of oneness, as well as a pull to a personal destiny, a place in the universe, a reason for their life. The answers do not lie in physics or science - indeed, their answers lead to despair, because they of necessity must conclude everything follows meaningless laws, and we are helpless puppets to those laws. But our experience is otherwise - our experience is that we desire something higher, and the desire itself is something that is difficult to explain, other than through the evolutionary growth of awareness, consciousness, and desire for purpose that we see in ourselves.

The Shalom process, and those like it, help a person come face to face with a part of themselves they may have denied, and gives them the opportunity to know that part of themselves in a strong atmosphere of love and acceptance, instead of the self-loathing that often accompanies exposing our shadow. The love allows them to embrace what they perhaps otherwise could never have embraced, and come to know themselves a bit better, come to know the reality about themselves a bit better, which is to say, come to know God better. And it's my experience that as each of us comes to know ourselves better, we discover we are more similar than disparate - which means we are tending towards one reality, rather than each finding things incomprehensible to another. The resulting sense of oneness, of belonging, causes us to want more, and fulfills some of that need for purpose and direction in our lives.

So my personal journey to re-embrace God is closely tied to the work I do - which I see as helping others to do the same.

Comment posted by Gene
at 4/17/2006 5:28:00 PM
That is still very fragile. It is something I hope I'm learning. I am learning a bit to go more with the flow, to dance, to let there be a give and take between reality and my fantasy of what could be. There is an intimacy there of a sort, I suppose.

There is a lot I have to accept that I don't like - someone said peace is choosing what already is. If God is truly what is, then the greatest commandment becomes "Thou shalt love what is with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength" - something I have certainly not achieved yet.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 4:33:00 PM
Your journey touches something deep in me in my own journey. But something you said puzzles me; the old God of your past only visited to pass negative judgement and your new God seems to be simply 'what is'. You said you have feelings, but does your new God express feelings towards you,too? I want to know - do you sense a personal intimacy of give and take with 'what is'?

Comment posted by Gene
at 4/17/2006 8:12:00 AM
Much more than in the past, although there is still some resentment, especially towards the church that taught such doctrine to innocent children. Obviously, I still have healing to do.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 8:08:00 AM
Have you reconciled yourself with having been raised fundamentalist? Are you able to visit the territory with a compassionate heart when you work with people who are wrestling with these issues?

- Laurence

Lessons of Life

2006-04-10T14:58:00.000-04:00

Lessons of life abound everywhere. I went to Outback by myself yesterday to enjoy a good steak. Next to me was a jolly table of around 10 people, seemingly having a lot more fun than I was.

I found myself getting annoyed with their laughter and camaraderie, and starting to find things to judge them for. Awareness kicked in, and the incongruity of being annoyed with people for being happy was too obvious to ignore. As I looked, I found their party atmosphere brought up old fundamentalist feelings of being more holy than people who "partied, and got drunk, and fell into depravity". I remember going to a rare formal dinner put on by my church, and when I expressed that I enjoyed it, she responded with something like, "Well, we shouldn't do this often" - implying to me that desiring having social fun was not a very righteous thing to do. "It is hard for the rich (i. e., those who indulge in pleasures) to enter the kingdom of heaven."

Once the old message became clear, it was obvious what I actually believed, as opposed to the unconscious feelings that had arisen. Today, I have the opportunity to join others in the celebration of life. I no longer have to be alone, holding up a banner of holiness - I no longer have to be separate from the world.

I have lived like a stranger on this earth. When I join others in their celebration, I discover that at last, I am home.

Radical Forgiveness

2006-04-09T21:44:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I sped-read a book called "Radical Forgiveness". It had some unique ideas, and I enjoyed it and set it aside.

But one idea keeps coming back to haunt me - the blasphemous suggestion that we never need to forgive anyone because no one has ever done us any wrong!

This is an absolute affront to my cherished state of being a victim, being sexually and physically abused as a child, being treated unfairly, not having everything I deserve from life, having people not love me the way they should.

I'm not sure I can really swallow the assertion; yet it keeps on haunting me. The implication is that I am powerful, that other people's actions are simply challenges for me to respond to, rather than a personal affront that I have to put up with. It has little to do with responsibility - we are all responsible for our own actions. It has everything to do with how I see myself in this world.

Over the years that I've thought about my childhood, my attitude towards my parents have slowly softened. It is not because I am avoiding feeling my anger, or because what they did is not so bad. It is because I have slowly seen their humanness. Being a parent myself, while I pride myself on not repeating the abuse I received, I also see how much I have not parented as I had hoped to, and that my son will also have his time of rage at his father, and I am humbled to see myself on both sides of the equasion.

In our new age community, we talk a lot about how we are all one, how the divine lives in us all, how we are angels but have forgotten these things. Yet we seem to make exceptions for certain people - our abusers, an out-of-favor lover, George Bush, the terrorists. I don't hear many people talking about being one with the divine in a suicide bomber. We don't want to acknowledge the bomber in ourselves, nor the hurt in the terrorist.

Is it possible there is nothing to forgive, that what we have experienced at the hands of others is ultimately there for us to learn from? A scary thought. I would need to take a lot more responsibility for my feelings if it were true.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 9:48:00 AM
Thanks, Gene, for posting this proposition and your thoughts about it.
Lots of thoughts and reactions popped up in me in response but I'll need
some more time to collect them.

For now, I'd only like to respond to Rich's conclusion that there are
"some glaring fundamental differences [between Islam and
Christianity]..." in their attitude towards forgiveness. The Bible,
too, teaches "an eye for an eye". Simply because it is taught in the
Old Testament, rather than the New one, does not make it any less a
central tenet of Christianity. And it's very much in operation at
present, in this country's reaction to the 9/11 attacks.

Thanks, Rich, for the rest of your reflections.

-- Brigitte

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 9:47:00 AM
Or even being one with the divine in George Bush, heh? We don't want to ackowledge the George Bush in ourselves, nor the hurt in George Bush.

(I bring that up because of the palpable hatred against the man that I feel from the mainstream culture. I won't have this conversation in person because the extreme negativity I feel from people who hate him, actually viscerally hate him, is too intense and makes me physically uncomfortable and unsafe. It's weird becuase it's like some actual emanation from them. It makes me believe in auras, though I've never seen one.

Pasha

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 9:47:00 AM
I've seen also this quote (on a bumper sticker) attributed to Gandhi:

An "eye for an eye" soon makes the whole world blind

My understanding of the whole "eye for an eye" concept is that Judaic law attempted to rein-in overzealous, retributive justice by attempting to limit the punishment to fit the crime. That is, it's not a prescription for revenge but rather a restraint. If my understanding is correct then I think it changes some things.

I've been intrigued by some of Tara Brach's stuff. Don't know it very well. I'm left with wondering about the concept of "boundaries". Do I get to set limits on what behavior I will tolerate and am I not somehow entitled to protect my own boundaries? And I ask this question both for me as an individual and a member of a larger society.

Pasha

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 9:46:00 AM
I think forgiveness is one of the most important virtues a human can develop. For me it sprang from my Christian/Catholic upbringing and I am grateful for being exposed to this concept. I say concept because not all cultures value forgiveness.

Several years ago I visited the Islamic temple near Bailey's crossroads with a group of Unitarians. There were many similarities in what I saw at the temple and what I had seen in my birth religion, but more notable were some glaring fundamental differences. The imam talked about how he did NOT believe in "turning the other cheek" and NOT teach "love your enemies". I left with a feeling of despair rather than hope. As Ghandi said that if you believe in an eye for an eye, you will both end up blind. Hate has to stop somewhere. Someone has to see the divine in the other. Someone has be larger and greater in spirit. Someone has to forgive.

I don't think it is so much a matter of overcoming hate and the desire for revenge as arriving at the point where you truly understand and feel that revenge and hate are pointless. Hate will continue to eat at you, skewing your every thought and action until you become dysfunctional. Revenge will only lead to revenge.

I can see where the author might say in a detached, philosophical sort of way, there is nothing to forgive, assuming the other person was only trying to satisfy their own needs, not hurt the victim, but when you are the victim there are strong, perhaps overwhelming feelings. Forgiveness is your option as a victim to begin healing yourself. It has doesnâ€™t have much to do with the perpetrator. They may not care about your or your forgiveness.

If this sounds a little like a sermon, I ask for forgiveness.

Rich

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 9:44:00 AM
This is quite interesting Gene. It feels like true freedom the acknowledgement that we have the gift to choose what benefits us without becoming a slave to a "wrong doing" and carry those chains for the rest of our lives. Thanks for sharing this powerful message.

Jackie

Sunday evening? Yes, I'm free!

2006-03-20T10:49:00.000-05:00

For a year and a half, I have been doing weekly events at my home every Sunday evening. They have been a joy, have attracted wonderful, close people into my life, and have challenged my skills as a facilitator.

Lately, I've noticed that the evenings have started to be a struggle, and I catch myself thinking what can I do that will please the people who come, instead of what can I do that will feed my desire to give. Perhaps it is burn out, perhaps it is a natural ending, perhaps I just need a break.

The decision to end the series brings sadness, wondering, but also relief. I am someone who, when given enough rope, will manage to bind myself so I can't move, so I lose the very freedom that let me aquire the rope in the first place. I stayed in my marriage three years after I realized I was miserable in it, because I had committed myself, for better or worse.

But I am learning. I am learning to look inside, to listen to the whisperings of the angel bending over me, saying, grow, grow, and to be willing to follow its direction, even when I don't know what I'm growing into.

I fear losing my friends and community. I grieve the possible passing of an era in my life. And I am learning to let go of grief, when it is complete, and look up to the beaming sun again, and fill my lungs with the fresh air of spring.

A child has not yet learned expectations, nor has fear made it cling permanently to the familiar. The child is delighted with every new nuance of life, and does not ask, "Why isn't it this way instead?" At some point, when dualism crept into a world where there was no distinction between "I" and "you", I saw the other as separate, and therefore worthy to be blamed for the things I did not like, and I became a victim.

Today, I am learning to let go of my demands that the universe conform to my expectations, and I find peace - and surprisingly, I also find life. New life springs up, not from demanding, but from yielding, and as I let go, I find I have more.

Comment posted by Gene
at 4/9/2006 8:39:00 PM
(I moved your comment, assuming it was meant for this post)

I do feel more free - right now, I'm just enjoying Sunday evenings, and the preparation time the days before, without any specific plans. But plans are slowly forming in my mind. I'm a bit tired of leading - but I think I would like to form a peer group, where everyone takes responsibility for helping make the event happen. It would be a smaller group, most likely, but would let me step down from a leadership role and just be a member for a change.

But, it's still too early to say much definite. I really enjoyed creating the gatherings, and now I'm really enjoying not creating them!

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/9/2006 8:31:00 PM
Hi,
We would love to hear your freedom choices since you've been liberated!

A Reason for Resentment

2006-03-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning with some sore muscles, probably from some exercise I got the day before, and thinking about the retreat I had to cancel. I'd been struggling with resentment over an imaginary number of people who felt the retreat was too expensive, repeatedly proving to myself why they were wrong, feeling like I was a victim of their stinginess.

However, I know better. I know at this point in my life that all resentment is illusion - that it always points back to me, to my expectations, to my demand that others act according to my beliefs, to my insistance that the universe please me as I demand. I know full well intellectually that the existence of my resentment has nothing to do with its content.

But as I nursed my sore muscles, wondering what purpose it all served, something came to me. The soreness in my body was a message to me of parts of me that needed attention - a bruise served to let me know that there was a need for my care of my body. The pain did not mean someone was hurting me; it meant I needed to bring my loving attention to the hurting area and take care of it.

Likewise, my resentment has nothing to do with the people I am resenting. Rather, it is a bruise on my soul, a pain that tends to separate me from others - it is a call for me to look at the part of my soul that is hurting, the part that carries expectations, demands of others, the habit of feeling like a victim. It is a call to turn my attention to that part of my soul, and bring lovingkindness to it, so that it can heal.

Learning to Love Myself

2006-03-17T12:04:00.000-05:00

When I'm observant, I inevitably see things about myself that I don't like. I observed the other day that I'm very serious most of the time, instead of taking more time to have fun, being more care-free, etc. Today I noticed that I was grumpy in the lunch line at the slow people in front of me.

But something has changed for me over the past few months. Usually,when I notice one of these characteristics, it is accompanied by a familiar sinking feeling, a disappointment in myself, maybe a frustration that I haven't learned this lesson yet, or perhaps some shame. That hasn't been happening lately. I noticed my grumpiness, and immediately I knew that I didn't have to be that way. I wondered a bit about where it came from and why I was feeling it. But it was simply who I was at that moment, and it was okay. And, the moment I had awareness, instead of using it to humor an old fantasy about how bad I am, I used it to build a new fantasy of what it would be like to be cheerful instead of grumpy.

There is hope, after all!

Fatal Attractions

2006-03-17T08:08:00.000-05:00

We are often attracted to people - lovers, heros, groups, etc. - because we see something in the other that we want. Something within us responds to the energy we see, and we realize we want more of that energy in our lives, within ourselves. The energy we are attracted to is already latent within us, or there would be no attraction.

A vital attraction is one where we change because of who we are with - we learn and take on the characteristics we desire. A fatal attraction is one that has resistance as well as desire, an energy we both want and which we forbid ourselves.

Suppose through some early circumstance, we do not allow ourselves to be happy and spontaneous. We meet someone of the opposite sex who is carefree, easygoing, playful, and something deep within responds. We want to be able to go there, yet our internal rules say we can't.

If it is a romantic attraction, we may become deeply involved with this person, loving, even worshipping that characteristic we so much wish for ourselves. We bond and start to become one with them, drawing them into ourselves so that we can have that energy, and start to merge our identities.

But then the inevitable happens. The force within us that won't allow us to have that energy, now starts to direct itself to the one merged with us, the one who has become a part of us. The force demands that everything that is a part of us suppress that energy. So the things that used to delight us in the other, now annoy us, seem silly, unnecessary, even annoying or cruel. The attraction becomes fatal, stimulating the destroyer within us, who has not yet been recognized as the killer of our own vital energies.

We can never get from another what we resist within ourselves. Our desire keeps us emotionally distant, because we see the other as different than ourselves. And our resistance suppress the very energy we desire in anyone who gets too close, because we have not yet acknowledged our own shadow.

This is one of the meanings of that phrase, "The answer lies within." We desire another's energy because it is our nature to have that energy ourselves, and it is we ourselves who are resisting the energy. Until we see our role in it, we will continue to pull others to ourselves, only to push them away when they get too close.

Think of the passion we feel for someone apparently different than us - "She's so beautiful! She moves with such grace! She's so lively, so charming!" The deep attraction we feel is actually our desire to allow those same characteristics within us to come forth freely. This is how deeply we want to be our true selves. If we realize we are attracted to our own true potential, we can let go of the desperate fantasy that we will not be whole without them, and begin to appreciate them as someone who embodies our own true characteristics.

Comment posted by jackie
at 3/27/2006 6:53:00 PM
Gene,

I have lately felt that the people I am with are like mirrors of my self. Some of them reflect aspects that I yearn and others reflect aspects I deny, or reject. The difference is that a mirror is static and a person is dynamic.
It is this energy in another that spot lights my shadows, making my shadows invisible, that which makes shadow remains there but to notice it with interest and acceptance the shadow is enlightened.

So I consider an encounter with another an opportunity to get to know about the stranger that I am.
I invite those qualities in people to merge with mine. I know you and you know me.

Old Age

2006-03-10T07:11:00.000-05:00

I visited a friend last night who is old, and is perhaps dying. His condition shocked me, even though I had been warned - a few months ago, he was fully capable - intellectually, physically, emotionally. After several falls and medical complications, I found him in a chair, thin, sunken eyes, the voice weak and slow. Several times during my visit, he had to go through the long and exhausting ritual of shifting forwards in his chair so that he could get a urinal under him to pee. I had to stand in front of him, ready to catch him if he slipped off the end of the chair, and help him get his underware down and back up.

I found myself scared, not wanting to be there. In the past, I recall visiting old people in nursing homes, and going into that trance that most visitors seem to have - How are you today? What did you have to eat? Do they treat you well? Good to see you, I'll come back again soon. They felt like an alien creature that I could not relate to. Especially as a child, they seemed so different than me in their actions, looks, and speech, that I did not relate at all.

But this man was a close friend, someone who had been a mentor to me, someone whose thoughts and feelings about life were deep and poinent to me. I struggled with the superimposed images of my mentor with this weak skeleton of a man, and shuttered. I could relate to the friend I knew. But if I related to this man, I would have to face that I could be here someday, having friends undress me and giving me sponge baths, giving up the idea of ever driving again, watching my mind fade until I could not remember what I was watching.

My internal reactions were not nice. I wanted to leave. I resented him talking so long, making it hard to leave a sick friend. I resented having to get him some food. I felt scared, almost sick. My mind shut off, and I found myself treating him like an old person, being polite, but distancing myself so as not to feel my own vulnerability to the fragility of the human body.

I pretend I will live forever, and that old people somehow have fallen from the path, rather than seeing old age as part of the path. I still cling to the notion that I have yet to accomplish my mission on earth, and if I become old and die before I do, my entire life will be worthless. And I am aware that at any moment, a car crossing the line, an anorism, a terrorist act could end it all. I feel a panic.

It is experiences like these that challenge me to look at my life, and ask, who am I really, and what am I doing here? And those are ultimately good questions to ask.

My Father's Death

2006-03-07T06:55:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking lately of my father's death. My dad lived a mostly unhappy life. Dealing with depression and a childhood history of abuse and neglect, he had little skill at relating to others or expressing his needs. A car accident when I was a child left him with disabilities that became a badge of wounding he proudly displayed and used to avoid responsibilities. He lived with dreams that he could never fulfill, and left my mother bitter and lonely.

He lived into his eighties. The last few years of his life were spent in bed with progressive diabetes. As the powers of his body waned, his fantasies grew, and he would talk about going into to New York soon to ride the trains, while his legs deteriorated. He refused to exercise or do the physical therapy the nurse prescribed for him, or follow the diet he needed - instead he would sleep and dream.

I had struggled with this shell of a father and the needs of mine as a child had not been fulfilled. He had found sexual excitement in my child's body, and like an innocent without conscience, took his pleasures from me when he wanted. Years of therapy helped me wrap my mind around what had happened and lessen the shame and confusion I felt. And yet I wanted to confront my father before he died - to tell him what I remembered, maybe ask him why he did what he did. I wanted to hear an apology - no, more than that, I wanted to know he loved me, and somehow did not intentionally hurt me.

Three days before his death, something odd happened. His nurse told me that for the first time, he became serene, peaceful, and his lifelong troubled face and spirit let go of their distress. He asked to see his two children - something he had never done before in my memory. The only times he had ever played with me were when my mother urged him to "spend time with the children". But at the end of his life, for the first time, he wanted to see us. My mother, in her bitterness, never delivered the message until after his death, telling me she thought we wouldn't care.

I still wonder deeply what happened in his spirit - someone who lived his life in self-pity, fantasy, and loneliness, who apparently suddenly became capable of love in his last days. What happened as it finally sunk in to his soul that this was it, that the end was near? It seems that the stages of regret and longing were already past - that in his silent revere he must have already forgiven himself for the way he lived his life and the things done and undone. Somehow, the self-pity and self-absorption were apparently gone. And when all the human failings of his life were stripped away by the immenence of death, it seems like something else showed through - something deeper than the scars left on him from the abandonment and pain he had experienced, something deeper than the self-pity, the blocks to really caring about anyone else but himself, the absorption with pleasure that was a relief from the pain of his soul. Somehow, a deeper being that I had never known spoke from a broken body, and sought to touch me and my brother, this time with love.

I think of those who come close to experiencing death, and experience light and love, and they lose all fear of death. I have never heard of anyone coming close to death and hearing the screams and smelling the brimstone. No, hell is here on earth, and is of our own making. My dad lived in hell most of his life - yet, in those three final days, perhaps the curtain was pulled back, and he saw a different truth, a truth where the time wasted no longer mattered, a truth that required no preaching or condemnation for not believing.

What would life be like if we could fully see that truth today?

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 5/21/2006 8:37:00 AM
I want to live in knowing the preciousness of every moment and knowing what is important and not living in fear. this is a beautiful reminder. I wish that you would have had the opportunity to hear what your dad had to say before he died.

A Use For Shame

2006-03-01T13:58:00.000-05:00

In our New Age, "shame" is the only bad emotion. It's called useless, destructive, unnatural, and the only thing to be done with it is to get rid of it. Yet consider that we, the modern human being, has been voted "Most Likely To Succeed" by evolution, of all the varient creatures that could have made it to the top through survival of the fittest - and we have this amazing innate capacity for shame. Why would evolution see fit to build this capacity into us if it did not have a positive function?

What we call shame often is not shame - it is anxiety over anticipated negative reactions of others - fear of rejection, or punishment, or abandonment, because of who we are or what we do. This kind of reaction would not exist in an accepting environment - it is caused because of a threat, real or imagined, of not being accepted as we are.

True shame is rather the belief that we are not okay - that who we are, or what we do, is not okay. Believing that we not okay means that there is an authority whose standard we have failed to reach. Often, that authority is society, or other people, or those close to us - we hand over our personal authority to them, and believe them when they say we are not okay.

However, there is one other kind of shame that is not dependent on fear of retribution, nor on the disapproval of others - that is when we discover we do not live up to our own values. The authority is now internal - we have values we believe in, ways in which we want to act because they make us feel proud to be ourselves. Yet, we all have times when we act contrary to our own values. When we do this, we feel shame.

In this situation, shame becomes healthy, even useful. Shame is the indicator that we are violating our own values, disregarding our own beliefs, violating our own integrity. It is a red flag telling us that we need to look inside to see how we want to live, and then model our actions accordingly.

True shame does not revel in our failure - how bad we are, how much we fall short, how poorly we measure up - true shame is a spur to action, to decide what we believe and to live by it. Think of a time that you were caught doing something that *you* knew was wrong, by your own standards. Think of the shame you felt. The next time you are inclined towards that same action, the memory of shame will give you more strength to act differently.

Primitive? Yes. But then all the emotions are. They were developed long before the cerebral cortex. But they also have a power that mere thought can't equal.

Killing the Ego

2006-01-27T13:36:00.000-05:00

I'd like to share something that came to me last night - I don't know how well I will be able to convey it, but here goes.

Over the past few months, I've come up with a much clearer understanding of what ego is (or, I should say, I've experienced something in myself for which the word "ego" seems appropriate). The word has always been confusing to me in the past - now I see it as nothing bad or good, just what is.

There is a part of me that believes I am different, special, unique, but in a separating way - in a way that says it is more important that I get what I want than that others get what they want, that I am different either by being better than or less than, that my point of view is more important because I am the one believing it, that my death is more important than the death of others because it is I (my ego) that is dying. This is ego to me, the illusion that somehow I count more than others, that I am the center of the universe, that my experience and point of view are more significant than that of others.

Last night, I was contemplating all the work I do to improve - workshops, books, thinking, journaling, soul-searching. I try so hard, and have tried so hard all of my life, to reach some higher point, some place where I would be more in the flow, more at peace, less encumbered by the traumas of the past. I looked back and was overwhelmed by the huge work I had done, and the huge task yet before me.

I started thinking about why I tried so hard, what I was trying to achieve, why I was so obsessed in letting go of ego, in embracing the universal, in coming to an enlightened place where the thought of death did not cause me fear, the thought of being unloved did not bring a feeling of insecurity, the thought of contradiction did not threaten a rigidly held belief structure. In short, I really wanted to let go of ego and embrace something larger.

What struck me then was that the motivation for getting rid of ego was ego itself. Why did I want to be enlightened? Well, if I was honest, I would have to admit I fantasize people would love me more, I would not be as threatened, I would feel grander, I *would* be right this time - in short, I would have given my ego a huge boost instead of killing it off. If "I" am now "enlightened", surely I am above all those poor slobs who are still rummaging around in self-help books like I used to do!

My motivation for killing off my ego is my ego itself! I'm willing to let go of a few bucks as long as I win the lottery. My real goal has been not to kill the ego, but only to appear to have done that, while really boosting the ego way beyond my greatest dreams!

This plunged me into a kind of despair, but oddly enough, a peaceful despair. I saw that there was nothing - absolutely nothing - I could do to kill off the ego, because the "I" doing the killing was the ego itself. It is like trying to decapitate yourself - it can't be done! You need your head attached in order to carry out the act.

So I was left in a quiet state of realizing that the struggle was useless. All I had tried was futile, because I had secretly been hoping I would reach some higher state by letting go of my desire to reach a higher state - I had not really let go at all, just found more clever ways of trying to satisfy the ego. So the struggle was useless. At last, I could on some level stop trying. I didn't have to strive for something higher, because my striving itself would prevent it. There was nothing I could do - absolutely nothing I could do to get what I wanted.

Echos of religious phrases from my childhood kept coming to mind - "except a seed fall to the earth and die, it cannot bring forth fruit". I feel there is something on the other side of this death, this letting go of striving. But I can't make it come, or make it happen.

So I am just waiting.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 2/24/2006 12:23:00 PM
Lovely. Elegant. Thanks.

More from the Mountain

2006-01-16T13:39:00.000-05:00

I continue to glow from my weekend. It is so powerful to me to be among other leaders, each person struggling with their own vision, each person loving and supporting the others, each striving to follow their heart's desire.

During the weekend, we took turns leading a mat trip (part of the format of a Shalom retreat), and being lead. Each leader, people who are trained, wise, adult, capable, when they got on the mat, went into their issues, and cried, or wrestled with their relationship with their mother, or raged against a significant other, or whatever. The lesson to me is, that each leader is fully human. We do not resolve all our personal issues before we become leaders - we learn how to be conscious and loving of them, so we can do the same with those we work with. Leaders are on no kind of a pedestal of their own making, because we are all poiently aware of our own vulnerabilities, our own dark side, our own divergence from our values. The thing we learn the most is to love ourselves, and each other, in our imperfection and pain, in our fear and anger, in our shadow and inadequacy. And when we can do that, we can lead, because it is that full acceptance that people need, not the right technique, or the right answer, or the right technique or tool. Those things are great, but as long as we believe we can't be loved until we are fixed, we will never be at peace.

One of my personal revelations this weekend was the concept of being on a journey. I started my personal growth in the recover (12-step) movement - and I still look at my life that way - I am recovering from early childhood abuse and trauma, I am recovering from my dissociation, from wounds and fears and hurts. They see it differently - we are not recovering, we are on a journey. All that has happened to us is part of the journey. This is relevant to our previous discussion on meaning and purpose in life.

Suppose I want to go to the store for eggs. I know my destination, and I know the approximate path I will take. I think of the most efficient route, and set out, each turn predetermed by my plan. I get there, make my purchase, and return home, with each step coreographed in advanced.

Contrast that to going for a walk. I have no predetermed destination, no path other than maybe a vague idea of how to start, no decision made ahead of time about which way I will turn or what I will try to see. As I walk, different things influence me in the moment - a desire to be in the park arises. a street is too busy, and I find I want more quiet, and head for a quieter street. A curiosity comes to me of what is in that graveyard I remember driving by. Each time, in the moment, decisions are made based on what arises within me. I am choosing based on what is within me each moment, with no prior "should", need, destination, goal, or purpose. The walk is now a journey, not a task. When I will look back on it, I may learn something about myself and what I desire, specifically because it was
*not* planned, and because I made my decisions in the moment, as the spirit moved me.

I am thinking, maybe this is where we get purpose in life - not from having some grand goal and plotting our way towards it, but to sensing the flow of life within us, each moment, paying attention, and making decisions based on that inner urge, that small still voice. Our purpose is to do that, to live by that voice, to be a creature in tune with that flow, not to reach a specific destination.

What a relief from the demands I place on myself to be great, to write books that will make me famous, to be the guru, to be a famous Shalom leader, to solve people's problems, heal them, and set them on the right path. If my only chore is to hear the sweet voice within and follow that urge, I still will experience pain on the path, and confusion and grief - but I will be connected with something deep within me that gives me life.

Okay, that's long enough a blog post. I am blessed in many ways - by my dear friends in my community, by discovering Shalom and so many other wonderful supportive groups, by the revelations I have come to in my wanderings, by the individuals in my life that mean so much to me. My thanks to all of them for being there.

Of Dogs and Judges

2005-11-30T22:39:00.000-05:00

At work today, I passed an unknown man in the hall, and as is often the case, glanced at his face with unease, wondering if he would glance at me, like me, give me a look of approval or disapproval as I walked by.

I caught a glimpse of the two of us in a glass door. I was a big man next to him, and the thought flashed through my mind, "He's probably afraid of *me*!" I smiled, and the approval I had covertly sought from him suddenly seemed very silly.

This man had no authority over me. He could not punish me for not fitting his perception of proper behavior or dress. His disapproval would mean no more than a barking dog chained to a tree - amusing at best, but ultimately irrelevant. I could even tease him (the dog or the man) and get him riled up - his response would have no relevance to my safety or well-being.

A dog, of course, thinks his opinion the most important in the world; and I, as a human, look down and smile at his naivete. His response comes from limited consciousness, irrelevant to the real world.

Is this not true of any of us who judge?

The Vulnerability of Men

2005-11-07T08:42:00.000-05:00

I'm back from the Mountain today - a profound and moving weekend with men. One of the things men find hardest to do - at least I do - is to become close and show affection for other men. Those barriers were broken down this weekend, and we held each other like brothers, able to look into each other's eyes and say how much we love each other. It is rare that I have done deep men's work in my life, but each time it has been profound.

On Saturday evening, three women were brought into our retreat, partially so that we could look at our response to the presence of women. One of our responses was to feel threatened. We had spent two days finding ourselves as men, finding our strength, our connection with the earth, our true desires, without women being an influence. Facing the prospect of these women being there, we felt afraid. One man said, women can cut us off at the knees. The moment we know a woman is watching, we lose who we are, and start wondering if we are pleasing them, if we are good enough, if we are acceptable, and suddenly we have to prove ourselves. Without women present, we knew we were okay the way we were.

This is a vulnerability in men that had escaped me, but was obvious the moment it was mentioned. There is both the desire to be approved by a woman, as well as the desire to be wanted by them, and both of those desires can cause us to compromise who we really are. The joint vulnerability we felt gave us a new resolve to be ourselves, whether or not women were looking. It took a bit, but soon we were dancing, knowing the women were watching, but also knowing we were perfectly okay just the way we were, and we didn't have to modify anything to please them.

I have a new feel today for what it means to be male - to be rooted in the earth, and to have the strength to know what I want, to state it clearly, and to go for it.

Friends

2005-11-02T18:58:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I take off for Shalom Mountain, a wonderful, magical place in the Catskill Mountains, where people grow, learn, heal, and find deep connections with each other. Ironically, I am going to the Wild Man retreat while still considering the offer of the Amazon native to live in his village in the jungle.

I feel extraordinarily blessed with friends. Shalom is a place I made many friends during my training there last year, and I am looking forward to seeing some of them again. And the community that has formed around the Sunday night gatherings warms my soul and feeds me. My life is rich with friends, lovers, support people, community. I think of how many people out there live lives very alone, maybe hoping for one person who will take away all their loneliness, and I feel lucky for the life I have found.

I often forget, and start to believe I am alone again, as was true for much of my life. At times like that, I withdraw and quickly fulfill my own prophesy. But today, at least, I remember, and I am grateful to every one of my friends for being in my life.

A Hole in my Head

2005-11-02T07:07:00.000-05:00

I wake up, as I have so many mornings in the past, not knowing where I am, or who I am. I wake up lost. I look out the window, and try to remember, what was I doing yesterday? What did I decide my goals were? What is supposed to be important to me today? Why am I here?

I have the distinct impression that I knew the answers to these questions, probably just yesterday, but once again, this morning, they are gone, and I am alone.

There is a hole in my head. I go to look for answers where I know I put them, and I know they were there just yesterday; but when I look, there is nothing, just a hole - no information, no hint of what was there before - just emptiness, filling time and space.

I have actually come a long way. For years upon years, I did not remember that I had known the answers yesterday - I did not realize that I kept forgetting and relearning the same lessons over and over. Today, I remember enough to realize the daily disappearance, and once again, I am alone in a world without meaning.

Relationships feel distant. It feels like they mean nothing to me, as if I would not recognize a dear friend or lover if they walked into my bedroom - I would just smile politely, as I do with a stranger, and wonder what they wanted.

I know yesterday I had passions - things seemed terribly important, there were things to do, things that had to be stopped, or be fixed, or be pursued. Today, I can't remember what they were - some chores come to mind, but that sense of vital energy that makes life worth living - I can't quite remember what it felt like.

I can remember that I have loved. I can even remember the expression on my face as I wrap my arms around someone I care about. But I can't remember the feeling that would have led to that expression, nor what would have motivated me to care.

Long, long ago, I learned a hard lesson - my deep, craving need for love was inappropriate for the world I lived in - it was out of place, it had no means of fulfillment, like a porpoise on land, desiring water. There was no water in this life, nothing to bathe and sooth the dry parched surface of my soul. And when I couldn't have what I so deeply wanted, I disciplined myself to stop looking, to block out the longing, to not ask why. The discipline had to be constant, continuous, because the craving was continuous.

Occassionally, with increasing frequency, I do find deep connection in my life - moments when I know without a doubt that I love someone, moments when I feel I am fully open and giving, and I have found my purpose in life, moments when I am in the flow and I experience what it is like to be one with the universe. Those moments are often so poinent that I have to choke off some of the feeling - I fear I will lose myself and somehow not come back. I fear I would unleash all the refused grief of hardened years, all the denied longings of the unknown being within, and I would cry blood. Like a starving person from the desert, who has to readjust to taking in food again, I fear the abundance would kill me if I truly let it in.

And so my brain protects me, as it has for so long, faithfully erasing those dangerous memories of love from yesterday, so I can start again, fresh, clean, and alone, without reason to want more.

Ever so slowly, love is winning out. Each morning, I trust my suspicions a bit more, suspicions that I do have purpose, that I am loved, that the world is indeed my home. Suspicions that there is fulfillment to my longings, that my passions do have lovers waiting for them, that my feelings have a reason for being here other than torment. Ever so slowly, each day, I start to find my grounding, and memories return, and I once again walk among the living. The hole in my head is slowly closing and filling in.

If I do not remember you, my friend, it is not because I do not love you - it is because there is still a hole in my head, and each day, I must retrieve from it the things that make life worth living.

Living in the Jungle

2005-10-28T08:30:00.000-04:00

While in the Amazon, I met a native who comes periodically to the city. He offered me to come live in his village 9 days upstream for as long as I wanted - he said I could live with his family, and they'd teach me the language, and how to hunt and fish, how to get medicines from the plants and trees, how to live independent of civilization.

I have been contemplating what life without civilization would be like ever since. In my fantasy, there would only be two kinds of activities - survival and play. I would do what was necessary to provide my basic needs - food, clothing, shelter. Everything else was optional - I would only do other things because I wanted to. It would be play.

When I think about how I live my life now, I notice that most of my activity is neither survival nor play - I do most of what I do because I should. I should go to work, I should be on time. I should clean the house, cook for my son, spend time with him. I should get that room rented and the basement vacuumed.

Most of what I do on the computer is neither need nor play. I should do a virus check. That list should be put in order, or I will have problems later on. I should update my web site.

There are very few things I do for actual survival - yes, theoretically my job is for my survival - but I don't need that job to survive. I don't have to have a clean house to stay alive. I really don't have to have a car - many people survive just fine without a car. The logical distance between going to work and putting food in my mouth is so remote that I just take it on faith that one is necessary for the other to happen. But what if it's not? What are the other possibilities?

Most of my frustration during the day comes from something not being as it should - the traffic is too slow, my computer crashed, I feel sleepy, my mailbox is filled with junk mail again, people drive slow in the left lane instead of moving to the right. Deep inside I feel all these things shouldn't be, as well as the people suffering from hurricanes, tsunamis, and suicide bombers. The world shouldn't be this way. I shake my mental fist at life, and go on.

But in my idealistic fantasy of the jungle, there is just living. Things just are the way they are. I don't say, the rabbits should be slower so I can catch them easier. I notice how fast the rabbits are, and plan on how to catch them accordingly. I notice when I am cold, and do something about it. I don't say why can't I have a pill instead of searching for a weed to make me feel better. The options are clear, and nothing else exists. When people tell me I have to do things a certain way, I say, why? When nature tells me, I say, okay. There is no one to argue with.

So why do I live with all these shoulds? Why is it so important to me for the world to conform to my idea of how things should be?

Control. If life is predictable, it feels safe. If I can control life, then I can feel safe.

If I do not feel safe, I must believe that life is hostile.

If my environment is hostile, then it was not made for me, nor I for it. I am an alien to my environment, and like a space traveller, I have to have artificial means of life support in order to survive. My life support system is shoulds - holding off reality with my demands of how life should be, approving or disapproving each event during the day, finding out whose naughty or nice by checking my list of approved actions.

We live in an age of technology, where devices are supposed to behave certain ways. Electronics are made to follow the rules of programming - when they deviate from the rule, it is bad - it is an error, a malfunction, and we buy a new one. Technology does not produce creative devices - my PC doesn't decide to become a Mac today just for the fun of it, to see how I will react. And those of us creating technology work hard to be sure our devices and programs follow all the rules exactly, all the time. Is it no wonder that the artist in us suffers?

What would it be like if I were to just let go? To notice what is, to live with it, and to act out of joy and creativity when I wanted, to play with life, dance with it, see how it would react to my teasing and leading. To let go of control, where no outcome is wrong, even if it is surprising or disappointing. What would it be like if I were to let go of trying to be as I should, if I simply did what was necessary to live, and the rest of the time, followed my passion?

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 10/29/2005 11:50:00 PM
I think the simpler life that you fantasy has its pros and cons, and I have had the same fantasy at times, and there are even TV shows now about groups of people simulating living a tribal or survival life as a game, but I'll go along with the civilized life. I've posted a reply to your Oct. 20 blog message which is really a copy of my previous message welcoming you back and commenting on what harm our society is doing to our planet. Andy

Comment posted by Heidi
at 10/29/2005 8:23:00 PM
I read your Blog about the idealistic wilderness life.
Seems to me the ideal mind set would work wonderfully if we were not pre-programmed with our life-long
experiences.

I remember that a friend of mine, coming back from Europe missed a simple thing like iceberg lettuce and another craved the American hamburger.
Thinking -- how would you feel missing the taste of real butter? (having seen you react frequently at
restaurants and retreats to the lousy food *s*.

On the other hand, it is conceivable that we can re-program many of our own desires in order to adapt to the passion of the wilderness freedoms - I have also experienced that kind of adapting - like at retreat where there is no outside communication (at least not for me)) I totally detatch from it - but I also know that it all comes to an end at a specific time. Heidi

End of the World

2005-10-21T21:03:00.000-04:00

At the risk of being given a white robe, poster, and a spot on the city sidewalk, I believe it is entirely possible that we only have a few generations before the planet runs into inevitable disaster, and civilization as we know it, and perhaps the human race, could be gone - that we can all forget having great grandchildren.

But when I get past the stages of panic and despair, sometimes I find a new place of peace. It could very well be that the human race was never meant to live forever - after all, that is not the nature of life. All things must pass. It may be that we are only meant to last a brief time, this tiny six million year tick of the evolutionary clock, like a wildflower blooming for a day before it takes its exit from the world.

If there is truly nothing that can be done, if these are truly our last days, then our job would be to shine in the time that is left, rather than to fight a hopeless fight or drown our sorrows in ever more sophisticated technology. We could accept our approaching death with grace, and live as we truly want to live - with grace and beauty and love in the short time we have left. The phrase "Live each day as if it were your last" might take on a new meaning. And we could love each other, and love our planet - not necessarily because we can save it, but because it is our true nature to love, and it is in loving that we find the greatest joy and peace.

Happiness is not found in the achievement of grand goals, but in the moment, in the echo of the laughter of children, in a moment of ecstasy with a lover, in the delicasy of a wildflower, here but for a moment.

Is this not all the more reason to start living now as we truly want to live? And is it not in living as we were meant to live that there is any hope at all?

Trip to the Amazon

2005-10-20T08:31:00.000-04:00

Just got back from a trip to Brazil - went to Manaus in the heart of the Amazon, and then Rio de Janeiro.

The Amazon stays on my mind - both the destruction and the concept of living without the crutches of civilization holding us up. Many of the natives have had to leave the jungle and get jobs in cities because their food - animals and fish - is disappearing due to deforestation. We saw very little wildlife there - most had been killed off. The Amazon river was at a 60-year low, and many side rivers were a small stream that a canoe could barely go up, causing vast areas upstream to be cut off from food and medical supplies from the city, since the river is their mode of transportation. We were told the drought is caused by changing weather patterns due to global warming. They also had a hurricane in southern Brazil - I believe the first in recorded history - due to global warming. The dolphins in the river are dying because the water is too warm. It may be in our life time that the way of life humans have known for millions of years will finally be eradicated from the planet, and our industrial life of the past few generations will take over, further destroying the infrastructure that was our birthplace. The life forms that took 60 billion years to produce human beings are being wiped out in a few human generations. We are killing our mother. And who knows if we really have what it takes to survive without her.

I still think about the offer from the native to go live in the jungle for a while. There are still an estimated 60 tribes in the Amazon that have never even been contacted by the outside world, still unpolluted by our ways. Tobias Schneebaum, author of Keep the River on your Right, went to live with the canibals in the Amazon some 40 years ago or so, and ate human flesh with them. He went back recently to produce a movie of them, and found them sitting around watching satillite TV. It will not be long before Coca Cola and Sony will become necessities of life for everyone in the world, and the corporations will have succeeded in totally destroying our connection with the mother earth in return for increased dividends. When will I ever have an opportunity again to find out what humans really need to live and be happy, before civilization convinced us we needed more?

I asked one of the natives who is now living in the city at Manaus and who had not been back to his village since he left (it is two weeks upstream), if he missed anything about the village. He said life was much easier there. Here he has to work 40 hours a week or more just to make ends meet. There he was with his community while he worked, instead of at a place of employment, and it did not take so many hours in order to provide what they needed to live. An easier life in the jungle? That sure challenges my view of things.

So I'm back in the world of computers, cell phones, PDA's, cars, polution, the "source of modern civilization" - America, from where corporate interests have spread world-wide, changing and destroying cultures and traditions thousands of years old, changing social and religious structure perhaps hundreds of thousands of years old. Technology, which in one tick of the clock has split the atom, traveled to other planets, modified our dna, produced artificial foods that we eat, allowed us to cram together into cities with no possible way of supporting the food and heat that we need to survive.

Yes, it is a way of living. But we do not know if it is viable. People cut down the forests because they want money like us - they want TV's and cars and computers and other "good things". Is there room on this planet for every poor person to have a car? Would our atmosphere survive it? Have we created a world where we can't allow the poor to rise to our level because our planet won't survive if they do? Is Iraq the beginning of the fight to horde the fuel of technology as we go rushing towards some crisis point? Our lifestyle is not viable in the long run. Our society is not sustainable. We have created a civilization based on the assumption of infinite resources, but now they are quickly dwindling. What happens when they run out? How many of us are prepared to go back to the jungle and live simply again? And if we did, would there still be fish to eat?

So, these is my ponderings from my trip. There is much more, but it will have to come out another time.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 10/29/2005 10:24:00 PM
Hi, Gene,
Welcome back!
Your account of your experiences in Brazil, in the "real world" as well as Rio, tells me that our planet is in worse shape than I had realized. What a shame, that our way of life in the USA is harming innocent people in other countries because we are so carried away in chasing the dollar sign (it's hard to not be part of it even if one is living simply), polluting, consuming non-renewable resources, destroying natural habitats. Part of it is global warming apparently, caused by atmospheric changes which in turn are caused by pollution. Humanity is becoming a cancer on the planet, like someone said, and this planet is the only planet we've got.
On the positive side, Rio must have been a lot of fun, and I get the impression that your trip and your experience as a whole was a good learning and fun experience.
I'll be out of town from this afternoon until I return Sunday PM from a weekend Sufi Dance Camp (Dances of Universal Peace and related activities) and the last day of the Maryland Renaissance Festival.
Andy

The right to not be abused

2005-08-13T15:38:00.000-04:00

Do we have the right to not be abused? Seems like a silly question. Of course - no one should be abused. It's wrong, and it shouldn't happen. Plain and simple.

However, there's a problem with this, especially for past abuse. It already happened. There is no should or shoudn't about it. It happened.

What does a right mean? Legally, rights don't stop anyone from violating us - rights merely give us the ability to sue and gain some recompense for our pain. In short, for some acts, we have a legal right to get even. Yes, funds recovered may go towards repaying losses, etc., but mostly, it satisfies our sense of justice, and also deters it from happening to others, because there is a consequence.

But when we are simply talking about human interaction, where someone is not kind to another, or acts selfishly, or says something cruel, what then? What does the concept of having a right buy us, when there is no legal recourse? We certainly have the right to take action to avoid further abuse. We have a right and an obligation to protect ourselves and those we love, even if the abuse is merely perceived or just a possibility. But when something has already happened, what then? What does our "right" buy us? Do we have the right to a life free from pain and all unhappiness? Who do we sue when we stub our toe on a rock, or get sick, or simply don't like life the way it is at the moment?

I find I often take offense at small things that others say and do, from the driver on the road cutting me off, to a friend who doesn't show as much kindness as I think they should. I am offended because I believe somehow that I have a right to be spared those annoyances, that I don't deserve it, that it should be different, that people should act differently. What effect does my belief in rights, shoulds and shouldn'ts get me? I get to feel like the righteous victim, the insulted one, the one who has justified anger, the one who wouldn't be as mean as the other guy. It gives me the ability to separate myself from the offender and create a world where I am good and he is bad.

To think of dropping my war cry against past abuses in my life seems immoral to me. And yet, what do I gain by living in resentment? I know full well that most of what I am angry at are acts done in innocence or ignorance. Yes, I've been hurt. Do I want to add to that the illusion that that they plotted evily against me?

What if we just dropped all past claims to being right, protected, loved, defended? What if we dropped our cases against people who made us feel violated? Then the past simply becomes our life, our story, our path, what happened to us. We no longer have a special corner in the hall of victimhood - we have simply suffered pain just like everyone else. We would be left with dealing with what life has given us - of finding some answer to the question why, of making some sense out of it, and incorporating it into our life experience.

What if there is really no one to blame? What if bad things just happen? What would life be like if we let go of our anger, our resentment, and accepted the life handed us, no matter how little we understand why?

What do you think?

Motivated by passion

2005-07-27T09:51:00.000-04:00

For the past several months, I've gotten up in the morning and danced to loud rock music, and I love it. I was inspired to do this from a workshop I took, where I could see the energy and life that this music gave us, and decided I wanted that in my life.

Previously, I had always loved quiet and silence in the morning. I would meditate, or sit outside quietly and look at the trees and sky, or listen to very gentle, soothing music. This was also something I did that stirred me greatly, although in a different way. The peace radiated into me, and started my day off feeling present and alive.

I switched to rock music, not because there was anything wrong with the morning quiet, but because I developed a new passion that I followed. There was never a rejection of the way I used to do things - I still remember the wonderful peace I got from those mornings. But right now, I am choosing the energy and life that rock music brings me.

Because I never rejected my previous way of doing things, there is no resistance to it. If I was at someone's house who wanted quiet in the morning, I could easily go right back to that mindset, and fully embrace the silence and reverence. I might miss the rock music, but I would not dislike the quiet. I now have two loves in my morning life, and I can be with either one, and be happy.

I have also not fallen into the trap of saying, rock music is better than quiet - or thinking that this is the "right" way of doing things, or it is somehow superior. Those attitudes would have the effect of cutting me off from the joy of my past, and create the fantasy that I was getting approval for having found the right answer. No, each morning, I get up, and the rock music calls to me. I respond from passion, not from righteousness, or having found the best way. Someday, the passion of the quiet may again call instead, and I hope I am awake enough to respond.

It is possible to act from love instead of from fear.

Surprised by Gratutide

2005-07-25T12:46:00.000-04:00

The workshop last night in my home was graced by 15 people - a lot, I thought, for a summer Sunday evening. I felt a bit awkward about my presentation - not polished, casual, going over a book I had not thoroughly studied. Yet the evening absorbed people's attention.

It struck me that the magic that happens often in my home is not so much due to my expertise as to the experience and openness of the people who fill the space with their energy.

Late that evening, after all had gone home, lying in the arms of someone I love, I felt an urge to cry, without any idea what the feeling was about. I kept picturing the evening, the people, the energy, as I let feelings come up. I found myself imagining remembering this evening as if from years in the future, long after for some reason these evenings had ceased happening, and I found myself saying, that was a good time. This was the kind of evening I wanted to remember. And I was suprised to find an unusually strong gratitude in me - for the warmth and love of the people who had surrounded me that evening, for the intelligence and sensitivity of those who shared their thoughts and feelings, for the physical touch and intimacy of sitting together in the hot tub, defenses down, comfortable in our skins.

And I realized, there is probably more gratitude in me than I allow myself to be aware of. I am used to digging in the dirt, digging up the pain, the fear, the things that block me from living a free and joyous life; I am not used to looking for gratitude within me. Perhaps I am happier than I let myself know.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/29/2005 1:03:00 PM
gratitude is a wonderful emotion i think, and one i have felt more deeply as the years go by in my own life (somehow related also to not taking things for granted).... gene, i could not read your words without thinking of one thing....and that is my ongoing awe, respect and yes, gratitude for the gift you have and share with us in your ability to create the kind of gatherings and safe space that you seem to so naturally , yet somehow magically create time and time again.... do you even realize how rare and precious your gift is? just my thoughts, anita

ADD and me

2005-07-16T08:56:00.000-04:00

Shortly after starting this blog, I was diagnosed as having severe ADD - attention deficit disorder - and I've spent the past two months researching exactly what that means. Now I know why I start things like this blog with such enthusiasm, then get distracted by something else and leave it hanging.

I now have four diagnoses that I have accumulated, like trophies to my insistant introspection - dissociative amnesia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and ADD. They all overlap somewhat, and I've learned that these disorders often do occur together. They are more like attempts to describe someone's mental and emotional processes than actual discrete attributes, and I'm finding it helpful to have these little boxes to hold and identify the various behaviors of my brain that I observe.

The diagnoses of ADD has been dramatic for me. As I read through all the characteristics of adult ADD, the one that stands out is difficulty completing projects due to distraction. This raises huge feelings in me. I am constantly thinking of ideas, projects, plans, dreams, and I start many of them, only to let them fall by the wayside because something else has taken priority, or because I can't stay focused long enough to get to the finish line. I have done this my entire life.

The result is that even though I feel I am capable of great things in my life, I have had to give up dream after dream in a very slow, painful process that feels like I am giving up my life. When I look at my track record, I can see that it is unreasonable to expect that I will accomplish very many of my dreams at all; yet to give them up is excruciating.

With the ADD diagnoses, suddenly this all changes. I am now faced with the prospect of having a focus and consistency that will allow me to accomplish more. However, this means facing the ambiguity of picking up dreams again that I thought I had safely buried. I find I have become somewhat attached to the feeling of tragedy, rather than jumping at the possibility of new life. And then, there is also the fear that it won't work. What if nothing changes? Will I have to bury those dreams a second time?

Despite the turmoil, I am in high hopes of something changing radically for the better. I fit the descriptions of ADD very well. I have yet to start on any meds, but just understanding my own behavior is a huge relief, and I find I can take the characteristics of my own mind more into account when I plan things, so I don't sabotage myself as much.

So, this is who I am, for better or worse. And I must love who I am. I no longer want to hide. Any part of us we do not love will eventually come to control us. I am taking charge of my life, and I simply don't have time for shame.

Romance and Pain

2005-05-29T14:52:00.000-04:00

Of all the things we humans do voluntarily, it seems that romance causes the most pain. We experience untold amounts of suffering, from the first insecurities of how to approach the opposite sex, to the pain of getting rejected, to the confusing stages of courtship where we don't know if we're wanted or not, to the actual relationship where all our baggage surfaces, and we learn (hopefully) how to distinguish between our baggage and our projections, to the horrible loss of leaving or being abandoned, to the lonely years of old age where companions are hard to find.

Given that evolution promotes lifeforms that flourish, and weeds out lifeforms whose nature creates a lot of internal stress and disharmony, I have to wonder how long our romantic period will last. After all, it's only been a century or two that we have lived with this concept of romance being the primary force that determines our mate. Is romance an evolutionary "mistake", and only after many generations of hard lessons will we find a better way of loving each other?

Starting off...

2005-05-29T09:06:00.000-04:00

Looks like blogs are here to stay, so I'm starting this again, with the hopes that it will fill the need in me to put myself out there in the world, and stop hiding who I am.

Freeheart the person and Freeheart the business have merged more and more, as I have let go of the professional workshops and groups, and focused more on open and free gatherings where I can share myself and my ideas. So this is going to focus a lot on my experience of the world.

I can't help get into theory now and then - it's fun to pretend reality comes in nice, neat little boxes that can be labeled. But I intend to focus more on experience - being here now - believing that my experience of the world is ultimately the only source of truth.

So this will be partially a journal of my own path through this fascinating and bewildering thing called life, and as such, I hereby give myself permission in this blog to mess up, be "in my stuff", say things that may be irrelevant to anyone but me, and just be who I am. At the same time, it is my hope, and often my experience, that others will find commonality and value in my experience, and that this will spur others to experience their own path more deeply and with more awareness.

So, here we go!

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/25/2005 1:29:00 PM
"Late that evening, after all had gone home, lying in the arms of someone I love"--Sounds great, Gene! We all love you. I wasn't there Sunday because of something else I didn't want to miss. I'm trying to learn how to reply within your blog; "Anonymous" is the only way for someone without their own blog or webpage. Andy

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 5/29/2005 10:17:00 AM
Hi! It is really you free in the world - WOW!!
Heidi

The Paradox of Acceptance and Action

2005-01-07T15:45:00.000-05:00

I have struggled a long time over the seeming paradox of accepting everything as it is and yet taking action in this world. The way I have come to look at it is this:

When I accept this moment, the now, the moment is not static. Within every moment is a kind of momentum that moves us forward. Evolution is a simple example of some irresistible force that has continued to produce creatures more and more aware of themselves and their universe. The now I am embracing is not only the static moment of how things are, it is that life force, the chi, that runs through everything, that causes continual renewal and growth.

Accepting the now means being aware of and yielding to that force within me in this moment - the "still small voice", the path I am on, the person I have learned I am becoming. All of these things imply movement for the future, as well as integration of the past. So, do I accept my grumpy attitude today? Yes - but I also accept the energy within me today that is slowly moving me towards a life of more peace. This means I don't have to fix myself, or fix the world - I just have to dance with it - to "play the chess game", instead of thinking I have a thousand serious moves left.

And cherishing the now means to fully see the miracle of that energy flow within me, to fully appreciate it, to get to know it, to feel gratitude for it, to even become fond of it - to have a deep love for it, for the divine within me, within all of us.

That's the theory, anyway :-) That is the direction I want to move.

Is it logical to accept things as they are?

2005-01-06T15:43:00.000-05:00

From a friend:

"I call it 'logical' (rather than mystical or spiritual) because what could be more reasonable than accepting things as they are *because they ALREADY ARE that way*, whether I like it or not?"

I call it spiritual as opposed to logical because it is based on experience, and how our spirit/feelings respond to it. I actually find no "reason" to accept things as they are - actually I find a lot of good reasons to dislike the world the way it is, and the only "reason" to accept it may be utilitarian - to not make myself miserable. But it is not a logical conclusion to me that just because the world is a certain way, that I should accept it, or say it is "okay" in any sense. For me, there is a step beyond reason that comes from my experience. I know, when I stop trying to change people, and start to accept them as they are, that things start to flow much better. I only know it from experience, not from logic. Spirituality, the way I use the word, is all about experience - gaining truth from sensing and feeling rather than from deduction or logic. That's why it can't be proven - it has to be picked up by each person in their interactions with life.

Reasons for living

2004-08-23T15:41:00.000-04:00

My answer to why live: I have never wanted to take my own life, even in the depths of my pain. Somehow, I always believed that things could get better. There's an optimist within me underneath it all.

But that hasn't stopped me from feeling a lot of despair at times. At one point, I remember specifically, I was pondering my death, and the resulting ending of all my projects - everything that was important to me would cease. A part of me wanted to live forever, and if I couldn't have that, nothing seemed worthwhile - especially, as Brigitte said, if you are in pain in addition to not having purpose, it looks pretty bad.

I was standing in the back yard, I remember, trying to do some yardwork, and disgusted with how pointless it all was, everything. A hundred years from now, nothing I could do would matter one iota. I decided to stop fighting it and just give in. Okay, it's all meaningless. And suddenly, I went from frantically having to do all these things to achieve my goals, to realizing I don't have to do anything. I could do anything I want, and it didn't matter. Instead of wanting to die, I felt a tremendous burden lifted. I could work on my back yard now because it didn't matter what I did. It was boring to just sit down. And there was some pleasure I got from meaninglessly rearranging the stones around the garden. It pleased me. But it didn't have to mean anything any more. I didn't have to have a purpose - I could do it from pure pleasure.

When I went through my clinical depression several years back, the worst part of it for me was the inability to feel pleasure. I remember walking outside on a beautiful day with a light breeze on my arms, and dully remembering, oh, yeah, this is the kind of day that gives people pleasure. But the sensation was painful to me.

Since then, I have rediscovered joy in doing things just for the experience, and not for any purpose. To be sure, I still do a lot of things with a goal in mind - retirement, better health, plans for my son, etc. But often, now, I remember that all those goals are actually just nice "what if's". I might build up a beautiful retirement and get flattened by a truck going to pick up my first check. Planning on the future is always a risky thing, especially when it comes to waiting for something to happen before you can be happy. Now, there are many times in my weekly life when I just enjoy a moment, or a person, or a sensation, or a thought, and it doesn't have to fulfill any goal or solve world hunger to be worthwhile.

So, my answer is that even if I have no goals, there is enough enjoyable in life to make it worth going on. Most of my misery I create myself by demanding things of the universe that it can't deliver, or demanding that the past be different than it is, or demanding that the future meet my expectations, or demanding that people be different than they are. I find it hard to let go of my demands of the universe and of people, but when I can, I start to notice the things life gives me freely without any urging of my own. It's a matter of flowing in the same direction as life around me instead of swimming upstream all the time.

I still believe there is a Purpose, beyond my small goals and plans - a grand Purpose for why we are here - but that is theory, and still hard for me to grasp with any certainty. I feel like it gets a bit clearer the more I am clear about myself.

Thoughts on the End of Life

2004-08-14T15:39:00.000-04:00

It's my belief that just as everything living has its time to live, and it's time to pass on, so I believe that the human race only has so many years to flourish in the universe.

I don't believe we are destined to expand forever, living in other solar systems, spreading throughout the universe forever. We know, to the best of scientific opinion, that the sun will burn out in around 5 billion years - and even if the human race could escape that, there is the eventual collapse of the universe back into its pre-big bang state, or some other form not compatible to the delicate conditions we need to survive.

If that doesn't convince you, consider that humans have been around for about 5 million years, or 5,000 millennia. Within the last 10th of the last one millennium out of those 5,000 millennia, we have harnessed electricity and traveled to other planets, created the atomic bomb, threatened our atmosphere and our water supplies. We have created enough nuclear materials to wipe out all life on the earth thousands of times over, and have created chemical weapons potent enough for a thimble full to wipe out a nation. Yet it is fairly obvious that human nature has not evolved as quickly as our technology - we easily fall into believing the much of the human race must be destroyed, and we are often willing to destroy ourselves as well rather than let our enemy survive. Humans do not seem a likely candidate to handle the powers that science have put in our hands. What are our realistic chances of making it through the next 1,000 years, let alone a few million?

And if I believe the human race will end some day, whether near or far, for me it changes everything. When we as individuals reach an age where we understand on a deep level that we will die, and we only have so many years to live, our focus shifts from merely staying alive, to figuring out what to do with the precious amount of time we have left. It is not a matter of doing the most we can; it is a matter of finding some meaning to our lives, some meaning for having wandered around on this earth for so many years during this brief flash of glory, whether long or short, before we lie down with the rest of the people and animals and quietly decompose beneath the earth.

So what of the human race? If it is not our destiny to forever expand and grow in power and glory, if some day the planets will be quiet and cold, and nothing stir except the grinding of platonic slates under gravitational pull, then what is our purpose? Imagine we are sitting somewhere, looking back on the still universe, asking ourselves, what was that all about anyway? What was the purpose of our brief 5 million years, scurrying around like it really matters whether a certain president gets elected or if we land that new job? Going back to the first bit of life in the primordial soup, what was this strange journey of carbon-based life forms, multiplying until it reaches an awareness and intelligence capable of destroying the planet that gave it birth? What was it all about?

I believe it was Charlie Chapman who, when told there was no life on other planets, said, "I feel lonely." When I contemplate our mortality, I feel sad, even though I will probably live another 30 years and experience many wonderful things in life. For some reason, we humans are not happy without a purpose, without something to make sense of it all. And that is our glory as humans as well as our burden - the animals are not awake enough to feel the angst we feel.

Our looming death forces us to seek deeper, to stretch our inner powers to the max, to seek a relationship with the universe, before it is gone from us, and we from it. This is where spirituality steps in - to answer the despair left to us by science and reason, to create purpose where there is none, to let us find our home at last - a journey I have personally only begun to take.

Taming the Primitive Nature

2003-06-03T20:56:00.000-04:00

Within each of us exists a primitive nature. This nature contains basic drives and desires and instincts. It is the source of our sexual drive, our emotions, our desire to connect, our needs. It is the source of our negative feeling that give us so many problems - selfishness, anger, the desire for revenge, the instinct to hurt someone we perceive as an enemy, the instinct to hide, lie, cover up, pretend.

We come by this nature honestly - it is the product of millions of years of evolution. In the jungle, the instinct to attack and kill something you perceived as a threat was a useful instinct, and humans probably owe their very existence to it. The ability to run and hide kept us from dangers we could not outrun. The fight to feed ourselves first helped weed out the weakest, and made our race strong.

However, those same genes are now finding themselves in the 21st century, where many of these instincts are not only of little use, but can be destructive to ourselves and those we love. So we find ourselves in a conflict - our intellect does a fairly good job at figuring out what is useful to us, but the power of our primitive nature often overrides our intellect and causes us to do things we regret.

The primitive nature cannot be denied. We know all too well the effects of repressing anger, or sexuality, or our own needs. It can be just as destructive as acting out on them. The primitive is a real part of us, and ultimately cannot be suppressed, denied, or willed out of existence.

However, there is a way out of this conflict. The primitive nature, while very powerful, is not intelligent. We may want to kill someone, but writing an angry letter will satisfy us, and the desire to kill will recede. We may have strong sexual urges, and no way to satisfy them, but we can use a lot of physical exercise to compensate. We may want to eat that cake when we are on a diet, but find that eating a small amount after a healthy meal may do the trick.

The fact that our primitive energy can be fooled also explains some of the puzzling destructive acts that people do. Someone was abused by his father, and he winds up abusing his wife. It is clear he is taking revenge, but his primitive nature does not realize it is on the wrong person. A few characteristics that remind him of his father is all it takes to set in motion that desire for revenge, for eliminating the danger that hurt him so much before.

Our primal energy cannot be bottled up without destruction to ourselves; however, it can be channelled into other directions that are not so harmful. Our intelligence can be used to look at the various acts that would satisfy a primitive energy, and pick one that would not be harmful. One kind of therapy does anger work, where the client takes a large foam rubber bat, or a tennis racket, and beats on pillows. Amazingly, all the trapped anger and desire for revenge can pour forth in this setting, because the client will not hurt anyone or anything. The results is a release and a relief from anger that has been buried, and less of a desire to act that anger out in the world.

What stops us the most is shame. Our society looks down on primitive energies - on sexuality, violence, selfishness - and for good reasons. But the result is to cause us to be ashamed of our primitive self, and attempt to deny it is there, or prevent it from having any voice. This denial is what creates the shadow - the part of us we don't want to know, and reliably turn our eyes from, so that we can live up to an artificial standard of having no primitive side. But these powers grow in the shadow, since they are not being satisfied or channeled in a useful direction.

Primitive energies are ultimately good - they derive from life itself. But it takes awareness of them to capture that potent energy in them and use them for good. Sexuality can be used to build a deep relationship. Anger can be used to energize us to take action against some wrong in the world. Selfishness can be harnessed into helping us love ourselves so that we can be more present in the world. The desire to hide can be channelled into a time of meditation that can renew us rather than separate us.

All that is within us is good. The more we are aware, the more we can actualize our goodness.

Projection and self-acceptance

2003-06-03T20:54:00.000-04:00

Coming to accept ourselves just as we are is a difficult battle for many people. Realizing they don't accept themselves as they are often becomes one more stick to beat themselves with. We are too often blind to our own attitudes, and trying to change alone is very difficult.

A very simple method for discovering the places where you do not accept yourself is by looking at people who bother you. We are only bothered by characteristics that we have judgment about. If I have no judgment about baldness, then I will have little reaction to someone who is bald, or to noticing that my own hair is thinning. However, if I have judgment about talking too much, I will be annoyed by those who do so.

Think of people you know, and pick the person who bothers you the most. Then pick the attitude that they have that annoys you the most. This is a judgment against that attitude - a decision that having that attitude is not okay, and anyone who has that attitude is not okay. Any judgment that we carry against others, we also carry against ourselves. We do not accept something in others, because we do not accept it in ourselves. Ask yourself what it would be like if you had that same attitude yourself. You will probably find a sudden self-hatred welling up. Then ask yourself if you have ever had that attitude, or ever struggled with it. Since it has an emotional charge to you, it is likely that you have had, or currently struggle with that attitude yourself.

You have now pin-pointed something in yourself that you vehemently reject - a part of you that you are not okay with. This is a restriction you have placed on yourself that keeps you from true acceptance. Every judgment of others comes from a lack of acceptance of yourself. We cannot hate another unless we hate ourselves first, just as we cannot truly love another unless we learn to love ourselves.

Does that mean I should go out and do the things I despise and think are evil? No, not at all. But it does mean that we need to recognize that on some level, we are all human, and have primitive desires, and that we need compassion in dealing with those desires. When we pretend we are above all that, that is when we reject those who are not, and we create a division between us and them, creating the illusion that we are different, better than, other.

Unity comes through recognizing our common nature in all of its forms.

Judgment

2003-06-03T20:52:00.000-04:00

Judgment consists of two things - opinion, and rejection. When someone does something that we disapprove of, and we feel angry, we have an opinion about what they did, and what should have been done instead. However, the harm is not in the opinion - the harm is in the rejection. On some level, we, the ones who judge, create an imaginary separation between us and them. They should have done differently, we believe, and since we know that, we feel somehow superior to them.

Often we shun someone in obvious or subtle ways - we talk to them less, we decide we don't want them as a friend, we avoid them, we smile politely rather than being real, we talk about them behind their backs. All these acts are ways of causing separation, of denying the underlying commonality we all have as human beings.

Acceptance can be a difficult thing - it means the willingness not to push someone away, or to remove ourselves from them, simply because we don't like a characteristic. But the separation we create causes us to live in an increasingly narrow world, where only certain people meet our standards. The danger in narrowing our world down to only those people who are good enough, is that we might find we ourselves don't qualify. The horrible fear of everyone who lives in judgment is that they will ultimately be the ones who are judged and rejected, and their fear spurs them on to even greater efforts to be right, to be righteous, and to shun those who might taint them in some way.

It is when we let go of our fear, and accept who we are, that we discover we are in a world full of brothers.

So Obvious

2003-05-29T21:01:00.000-04:00

From the outside looking in, it is so obvious to me what you should do to change your life. I can see it clearly. It doesn't look hard. I get annoyed because you seem to be resisting.

Yet, I come home, and ignore once again the pile of unanswered mail, unpaid bills, undone laundry. So simple. Just open the envelopes, write a check, put soap in the washer. Yet, for some reason, for me, the thought of these simple acts fills me with terror, and night after night, I choose instead to snuggle up to my computer and the comfort of killing aliens.

Faced with my own helplessness over something so simple and so absurd, I feel ashamed. I feel ashamed to the same degree that I feel superior judging you when you can't get past a block. The shame stops me from reaching out, from admitting to you that I have a weakness. The shame stops me from discovering my commonality with you, and keeps me believing that I am somehow different, separate, not really a part of the universe, not really part of the grand scheme of things.

If I tell you I am weak, you might tell me you aren't, and I would feel lost. The unity of life fades, and the illusion of separation grows, each hiding our own precious shame, fearful lest someone discover we too are human.

It is sometimes difficult to love ourselves. That's why there are other people.

Five Degrees of Awareness

2003-05-29T20:57:00.000-04:00

Awareness brings us freedom. The victim is the person not aware of the part he plays in his own drama, and thus not aware of the other choices he has. As we increase our awareness of how we live our lives, we find we are more responsible, yet, paradoxically, more free.

First Degree - the Watcher When drama happens in our life, we experience only the people and things around us, but not ourselves. Consider animals, which to the best of our knowledge have no self-awareness. A dog sits alone in a house, lonely, hungry. He is not aware of himself as a lonely, hungry dog, sitting in a room - he is aware of a room with no one in it and uncomfortable sensations hovering around. The owner comes home, and the dog is happy. He sees the owner, and the world seems good again. The dog is not aware of himself being present as part of the drama.

So our initial experience of any drama in our lives is the environment around us, which catches our attention and invades our senses. We do not notice ourselves, because we are the ones watching. We do not notice our judgments of others, because we don't experience our judgments - rather, we experience those around us as being a certain way.

Second Degree - the Feeler At this degree, we notice that we exist, and that we react to the world around us. We are aware we have feelings, opinions, intentions, and desires, and we are aware of ourselves as a being in the world, reacting to things around us. When we are with someone, we conceptualize two people together, interacting. We are aware of ourselves. This is the first step to consciousness.

If a co-worker walks past me without saying a word, I may say to myself, "How rude!" This is first degree awareness - I am not aware of myself or my feelings - I am only aware of the co-worker and his rudeness, real or not. My experience is that he is rude. Second degree awareness causes me to say, "I'm insulted." I am now aware of myself in relationship to the co-worker, and my reactions to his actions. This is the first step to objectivity, and allows us to see our judgments as reactions of our feelings rather than reality.

Third Degree - the Actor We discover we are an actor in the drama occurring before our eyes. Not only do we have reactions to others, we interact with them. My feelings of insult may be because of expectations I have that may not be valid, or because of failure to be aware that my co-worker has a meeting and has no time to chat, or because I happen to feel grumpy already. My reactions are in part caused by my own actions, and not entirely by my environment. This is the beginning of responsibility.

In the drama before our eyes, the watcher and the feeler were in the audience, watching the play; the actor is actually on stage, creating part of the drama that is happening. We are now an active part of the story being created.

Fourth Degree - the Director We become aware that in this drama, we are not only acting our own part, but in our minds, we are creating the characters and situations we see around us. People become who we want them to become, and situations take shape the way we want them to take shape. If we want to see someone as cruel, we will notice every nuance that could be interpreted that way, and write off every bit of counter-evidence. The person afraid of abandonment keeps seeing abandonment in the actions of everyone he gets close to. The world conforms entirely to the drama we are caught in, and the other actors appear to take on the roles we want them to have. We recreate our story, using others to fulfill the necessary parts of the drama.

Fifth Degree - the Playwright Finally, we discover that we are the authors of the entire drama, from beginning to end. It doesn't just happen to us as victims of a tragic story - on some level, we have written the story, enlisted the players, given everyone their lines, delved deeply into the drama to recreate the feelings, and then watched from a distance as the story of our life goes by.

What next? Surprisingly, when we become aware, we do not feel despair, but rather a lightening of the load. It is the truth that sets us free. We no longer have to act out our drama. When we are fully aware of the reality, we stop acting, because reality is much more satisfying than the endless repetition of unconscious urges. Realizing that it was just a dream, we wake up, get up, stretch our limbs, and look out on a new day.

The Dance of Life

2003-05-21T22:29:00.000-04:00

At any given moment in our lives, there are things we can do, and things we can't do - there are open doors and closed doors. At every moment, that configuration changes slightly - something new becomes possible, a new opportunity arises, a new person comes into our life. And some doors close - the weather turns and we can't do the picnic, we get sick and can't work, the traffic light turns red.

Dancing with life involves being aware of what is available and what is not, and moving with it. It means seizing the opportunity before us, and letting go of opportunities past. It means going through the open doors and stop pushing on the closed ones.

Dancing with life involves a lot of letting go. There are many things we demand of the universe that we simply can't have - perfection of ourselves and others, staying young, people behaving as we think they should. When we have no control over something or someone, dancing means letting go and finding a way of accepting what is and flowing with it.

Dancing also means being aware of when our energy can merge with the universe and produce new life. It means realizing when the power to change the world truly lies in our hands, and then freely choosing how to respond.

Dancing with grace means flowing smoothly, without strain, responding quickly to the lead, willing to change in the moment if it is right to do. When opportunities change, we move instantly to the next one, rather than wasting energy resenting the change to our plans. Dancing with life is living in the moment, and letting go of our investment in past directions.

Unlimited

2003-05-15T21:02:00.000-04:00

It's not until you fully embrace where you are that you can be somewhere else.
It's not until you fully embrace who you are that you can love someone else.
It's not until you fully embrace your limitations that you can become unlimited.