expressions

Can you see the bridge between the railings?

Kelowna is all about the lake and waterfront experience.

The Shadows make a painting.

Red reflection in the water cuts through the movement.

Walking along the board walk creates a sense of community as people interact and enjoy nature together.

Kelowna in the summer has the look and feel of a tropical vacation spot.

I have taken some photos of Kelowna and “heated” them up. Here is the new gallery for you to enjoy.

Plato’s cave underground lock step shuffle till you drop distraction moaning cgi disillusion

In the doorway. Between seasons.

The problem is life is not a metaphor. The problem is what we are told is real is not real but rather the lower realm. We tunnel in the darkness structures that were created to keep away the light. We cannot see they are projected constructs that we have agreed to group believe. A metaphor is the holding together of two distinct objects to reflect into one another. Neither of those objects is the truth but by reflecting into one another they create a deeper realization than flat life. The mind holds on to metaphor like the tiny finger of a bigger hand. Something is there. We sense it.

In the darkness, we see the shapes of others only. We see their outlines and their pace. Trying to keep our rhythms in tune with theirs, we avoid being stepped on, pushed, trampled, or even worse left behind. We see only the outlines and hear chanting songs that keep our minds full of words that are not ours. The sound of conditioning begins before birth. The mother’s voice, the father’s voice in utero we are born to hear. And then the classrooms, the televisions, the radios as we shuffle along cave tunnels. We give up our urge to run into the light because we will be left abandoned.

we live in the lines we are instructed to walk in.

Where will the voices of love be then. What if there is no light? What if we have left one darkness for the greater void of black alone?

None of us shows a face. The eyes do not meet. We follow hoping for an end. Fearing our end. We pay our personality so that we will be surrounded at the end. Family gathered around the bed as we cross over because we were so, were not so, because we followed nicely in the familial line unseen, unknown, compliant dead already so that we can have comfort at the body death.

What is the punishment for visioning out side the tribe? It is to be shunned. We sit in school hallways alone while hearing the vibrant voices from the excluded room. We bend over lunches in the high school dry mouthed, eating alone. And so we dare not leave the lines. We dare not say we cannot see the lines. We turn away our spirits to watch them consumer tagged on Disney channels. Lines drawn on paper flat assembled mysticism like a wafer under the tongue. “Here, my child, here is your spirit.” Only the anointed can give what is not allowed to be.

A few are hiding in the dark, the urge to spark. Turning inward the rage and guilt of wanting to be free repressed into the alchemy of self loathing. The last loss of identity. Muffled minds, given up for hope. Making self wrong in order to be right. Damaged in the loving place.

Some know there are strings of energy flowing from one to another. In the darkness of the cave tunnels, we see the flaring neon lights but dare not speak about.

The physics truth fire works illuminates that there is a vastness beyond the shuffling tunnel chain gang life. And it is then we see.

Intensity of connectedness flows through us

Our society, our parents conditions us to belief systems and behaviors. At some point, we can grow up and with the love of a perfect parent start to condition ourselves to be all the powerful potential of love we are. We have to start with ourselves. I am reading everything I can get my mind around about habit, life changes, restrictive belief systems.

William James, the philosopher was planning to kill himself when he decided as an experiment to do all those things a happy, successful person would do. For one year. No variant behavior from that path. He made powerful friends, he married, he wrote philosophy and he became famous. In one year. This behavior, this choice, this decision will lead me to be who I wish to be, he realized.

I was thinking about the people I saw at the bus depot who were limping, heavy in body and unwell. They sat drinking coke and eating candy bars. The drinking and eating was the compensation for the affliction. The cause and the compensation both working together beautifully to create an end result.

What results do you want in your life? Where do you hold your gifts, your power? What if you could believe that for one year, or one month or one week that every action you took was to move you closer to your true, beautiful, healthy self. Is that not what a parent does for a child it loves? Can we dare to love ourselves that much?

The shiny shoes white dress bowed up hair singing and dressing up her dolls child who had marriages and plays and told stories and brushed her blonde, long haired cat with a soft brush while the cat lay warm in a patch of sun brushed the cat until the hair was burnished with oil and warmth and love the girl who picked flowers out of ditches in limp handed bouquets for her mother and sang and sang and made up story songs and hopped along the path avoiding rocks who kept 12 kittens alive by making them line up for their eye dropper of milk and warm cat food the child who lay on the floor with her head on her elbows listening to stories on the radio about magical bears and the missing christmas star and was free inside, always free who read with her legs in the air because she wanted to was perfectly me.

thoughts:

I am taking science of Mind classes at the Centre for Spiritual Living and sing in the choir. When I am singing I disappear, my body dissolves and my heart becomes the space around me. I feel deeply in love with the other people around me, with life, with the flow. Sometimes I cry from joy. In Oneness practice which is an East Indian meditation practice using the breath I see guides and spirits around me occasionally. Since taking the vusuib quest journeys, I hear a voice above my right ear which is new. It is the guide and it tells me things like “You are love.” It is very clear.

Another result of my setting intention is there is so much less chatter in my head. Some times for minutes at a time I am in no me state just walking down the road. I become what I am seeing, or hearing or smelling. It is not me doing it. It just is. There is such a great, velvet peace in those times. I could be here or in another body or in another time it doesn’t matter. It is just isness. The combination of meditation practice, writing, doing art, studying, church has shifted my life. The people around me now are kind. I am met with smiles. Toddlers run toward me. People tell me I am beautiful. It is another physical corridor another brane that I have never inhabited before.

Sure competition, darkness, loneliness come up but they are like a rock outcropping on a rolling gentle hill with a vista. Their contrast with the texture of the rest of my life is stark. I know they are habits of mind. They are outcroppings from the geography of a past life and I understand that.
I saw my brain rewired in the jungle. I saw new synapses being laid down. And now I am doing everything I know how to do to maintain and develop that manner of being in the world.

What tells me it is working is the mirror. The people I have staying in my airbnb, the people I have around me are gentle, kind, authentic and working on their relationship with themselves. That is my reflection. I have never know what it was to be at peace before in my life. But most of the time that is my address. Sometimes I am doing the gothic novel ranging across the grange howling into the wind thing. But it is less and less frequent.

Once a woman who worked in a doctor’s lab told me that more tests were run in the month of February than the other 11 months combined. The sun has disappeared from the Okanagan Valley, the excitement of Christmas is over and the flu has hit many.

For those who don’t have a “big date” occasion on valentine’s day, the days just unwind slowly until warmth returns. It is easy to live life looking forward. Programming expectation. Watching from the shore. Falling through time.

I am still trying to find a way of being that is not passive and recuperative. I know a bad breakup can take two years to recover. But the timer has gone off. It is ringing or dinging or singing. Wake up. Get up. Take a risk.

I am back into working out and eating more carefully. Green smoothies with lots of kale and spinach are actually good. Tofu and fish are the main protein sources. Lifting weights is starting to build back muscle again. Sitting meditation has become automatic and I have begun going for a short walk afterward.

On the night of the full of the moon, I made a new vision board with my new life pictured on it. It feels good to wake up and see it the first thing in the day.

My full moon vision board

I have a table at Eco Tone festival in the Rotary Centre on Saturday night, will submit one piece to the member’s show at Lake Country. Brew Gallery in Vernon is having a Valentine’s show and I have three pieces going into Sopa Galleries Under 8 show in April 4th to April 14th.

I am taking my second class through the Centre for Spiritual Living and working out of Calling in the One. So much is arising. I am seeing patterns and making discoveries about myself. The failure to be parented in a safe manner has left its mark in my relationship with myself. I get it now and I am learning how to be kind to me.

There are times when I feel a flood of love for all of those I know. It is a powerful moment that stops time. I think of those who have looked at me with affection, of those who have said kind things, brought me a cup of tea, opened a door, listening to me when I was falling apart. It is such a gift. And I understand it now.

My heart opens when I sing in choir. I dissolve into a beautiful open place where there are no limits. It is ecstatic. Reciting poet

I will be reading at the Kelowna Public Library on Feb 13th and on March 2nd I will be reciting at the Lake Country Art Gallery. Other public poetry readings that come up in the next few months are great opportunities to practice and present my new works.

Getting back “on calendar” has been an adjustment. I have been floating in deep space for the last few years and now I want back in… back into life.

Where do I go next? The fact Naropa’s low residency program has shut down means I have to relay plans. There is so much I want out of life, my new books published, the chance to help others, the presence of the beautiful healthy man who will be my life partner…. it is all just out there. Somewhere beyond February there burns a light.

As I sit through the winter, I am more drawn to the movie channels on televison. The struggle to place purpose in my life in a dark time without any boss or authority giving me marching orders is fascinating to watch. For over thirty years I had a job that spun out to structure my weekends and holidays, as well. Writing plays, teaching acting, sewing costumes, marking senior essays filled my hours.

Shortly after I had retired in 1999, I had a studio to provide me with momentum. The requirement of being in the Rotary Centre for certain hours, to attend various openings structured my days.

Also, being for the first time in my life since I was in my 20′s without familial obligations is strange. When I was single, I had two children to feed, clothe, attend to. They took my focus. After they left home, my husband took as much focus and care as my children had. But that is another story.

Now, in the last three years I have been alone. At first, I had a short contract with Okanagan College to teach ABE and I enjoyed that. Some courses were forthcoming from UBC-O Continuing Studies.

But since these classes have closed down, I have been in a deep space float. Focusing on my spiritual work with retreats, meditation and turning away from the world left me sounder, more centered.

But now, now it is a different story. As I was watching the re-runs of movies on the “box”, I kept running into Colin Farrell. His dark eyes so murderously focus. His intensity holds a power that only our shadow self can reveal. When he began some commitment to action in most scripts, he would throw his fate to the wind.

It spoke to me. I used to be that way. I went to school bruised and exhausted and made a good student of myself. I read all the non-fiction books in the elementary school library book by book in the order they were shelved until I had read all. Two Years Before the Mast was one of the grade 6 items. In grade three I had a learning disability but by grade ten I read at a College level on standardized tests. I was one of the top three speed readers in the school.

I graduated with honors from high school and had, by doubling up courses, in University earned two degrees in less than four years.

I raised two children alone without any help or family aid. A further shore would appear in my vision and I would bend my back to the oars and not rest until I got to the land.

The dark and the light. The masculine and feminine.

As I sat on the couch, I thought of how my darkness, my drive, my singular ability to work were my power. Going to the internet, I read about the actor’s prodigious work ethic. I read about his moving unsuccessfully from one relationship to another. Now, today he is single. He is working on his acting skills. He is muscular and tends to the maintenance of strength in his body. He signs on to one production after another.

So it is my masculine side that has protected me, kept me strong and lead me down dark alleys in the pursuit of ego. As I was attracted to his flinty eyed stoicism, I understood that my ferocity is not something I need to disown.

On this winter evening, after watching three Colin Farrell movies I could feel my wonderful inner demon shadow self awakening. Only this time, I have the watchful feminine qualities that I have developed in the past period of hibernation to moderate my choices. The mindful nurturing of my own short, dark powerful, unacknowledged male energy is what calls to me. And that is why Colin Farrell is my role model.

Aredhel is how I envision my gentle feminine self. What a great marriage I hold within my field. Aredhel and Collin Farrell. Enough to make any one laugh and set out the door with a sense of confidence in magic and power.

After the 20 hour bus trip back from Houston, I was fairly depleted. I often remark how the “let down” period is usually two days after the life marathon event. Les Mis with friends was a total sob fest for me.
The combination of being physically tired; bored at the routine existence; having no project of passion in my life; missing my daughter, her family and my grandchildren probably played into the prodigious sobbing.

Canadian Beige series Capri Bean Scene

Also, lately I have been feeling so much that I am at a fork in the road. I see others my age who are choosing to leave. The thought of the “legacy” that I haven’t completed plagues me. What if I were gone? What have I done to fulfill my dreams? What gifts have I left in the lives of others?

My life seems so small in comparison to my dreams. The choices that I have made to play safe, stay in the ridges of routine, keep myself disciplined have left me feeling disappointed in myself.

When I was young, I saw myself as an aerialist swinging high on a trapeze. The risk taking, the physical skill, the star power was in me. I could feel it. Power. Power in sequins.

So when did my life become so mundane?

Capri Bean Scene Art Show Kelowna in January

In the past three years, I have come off of work addiction; relationship addiction and have learned to sit calmly in my center. But the sound of the big top still plays in the background.

How can I be myself; hold to my dreams and be so cautious?

One of the biggest difficulties for me is learning acceptance. I accept the fact that I always double think everything. I am cautious until I react as if someone has hit me by a dart of some kind of adrenal intensifying plant. Then I suddenly lurch out into action. Do I think I can do things differently?

For instance, after the Les Mis sobathon that began as the lights dimmed (I have seen the movies and stage plays), I got very ill.

Keeping my spiritual practice in focus, I began to support my body. I stayed home. I drank lots of fluids. I kept my mind calm with meditation and affirmations. Prayers for healing were offered up.

Underneath was the foley like music. Underneath the intention and spiritual practice was the voice, “See. You never start. There is always something you create that keeps you small. Now you can’t start because you are sick.”

As I watch myself, I think of how everything is spiritual practice. Can I just watch my self-denigrating voice and learn from it? What is it that holds me to a place that makes me so restless and yearning? How much of these impatient thoughts are because it is time to reform my life and how much of them are old habits of mind?

When it is time, it will be time. This is what I tell myself.

But I made a chart which covers my intentions. I can check it off in a daily manner. I can walk along the lines of intention. Disciplining myself even further, when in my heart I wish to run away to the circus, stand in the centre ring and astound myself and others with my courage and my fashion sense.

Tonight I watched my five and seven year old grand daughters perform in the Christmas Concert. Being back in a school gym for my 27th Christmas Concert was not in and of itself something I would choose to do. But the girls were dressed in their sparkling dresses with their eyes sparkling. They had rehearsed and been coiffed by their talented mother. They were ready.

The eldest admitted to being nervous and had been ill all day. The necessity to perform for two grandmothers and a grandfather allowed for no other recourse. The show must go on.

I informed Rahne the eldest that when I get butterflies in my stomach every time before I sing or recite poetry, I have them fly in formation and pull my chariot.

Previous to this conversation, the middle girl, Teagan, informed us that even though it is cold, blustery and snowing continually, it is Fall, “Because my teacher said so.”

The eldest informed me that the butterflies had to be horseshaped to pull the sled. She looked impatient with my silliness. I said if it were fall in winter then butterflies could leap into the air like horses. It all made sense.

The deadly boredom of long, convoluted plays being joylessly presented in a crowded school gym gave way to inspiration. In one choir number a curly headed girl got up on stage, standing in the middle of the bleachers full of singers and just Auntie Mamed her way through two songs. Her eyes were on fire. Her arms flew out in all directions. She bent at the waist and scooped the air. She was unafraid. The stiffness, reluctance or fear around her had absolutely no effect on her. She knew who she was and she was put on this earth to sparkle out. Everyone woke up. The audience sat up taller, her ferver became to work its way first to those adjacent to her and next to the entire row standing behind her. Her infectious joy was spreading. We all thanked her. For being herself. For being lively in this life. We applauded.

DROPPED JAW SHOWS GREAT TECHNIQUE. PINK WITH POLKA DOTS BEAUTY

My grand girls came on and were dressed like little girls and not replicas of Lyndsey Lohan on a spree, or Brittany Spears in her bling tart stage. It was refreshing to see how tidy, graceful and dignified they looked. My daughter is so proud of her girls and she protects them from the madness in the world. Even down to how she dresses them.

I lost the middle girl in the last number because she was standing in some crowded group of same sized children by after almost 30 years of teaching acting I found myself weeping copiously when the eldest was bang on the rhythm, coming in on all of the correct cues and totally confident on stage. While at least twenty other children around her were lagging when a new phrase was begun, she ignored them and stuck to what she knew was correct. I was in awe of this seven year old with the inborn ability to deliver exactly what the director had asked of her. Her feet are on her own path and she is not mindlessly following others. Again, her mother has encouraged this attribute in her daughter.

PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION

I was bored, I was appalled at some fashion choices (ever the fashionista), and I was proud. I was proud not of what I have ever done. I was so full of gratitude for the woman that my daughter has become. I was so full of love for the strength of personality in those two little girls who stood on that stage tonight. A five year old and a seven year old trusting life, raising their voices in confidence, being so beautifully who they are because they are loved.

And that was my 27th Christmas concert. It was their first.

On the way home in the car we applauded the youngest who is three for sitting through the concert so nicely and looking so beautiful. All four females joined in.

I am so pleased that my focus and continued discipline has begun to reap rewards. In one day, I learned that the small segment filmed of me for a documentary will appear in Medical Pluralism, five of my poems will appear in an anthology of poetry and I am at long last getting to sing two lines as a solo bit at the Centre for Spiritual Living’s Christmas Festival of Lights.

I have been working out regularly to keep my body in tone, sitting meditation regularly to get my mind in tune and practicing love when I leave the house. Today I hugged two people and the change over their faces was wonderful. One was the man at Okanagan Builders that changed the windshield wiper on my car and the second was the woman at my dry cleaners. When I came into the stores, they looked glum and kind of gray. As I left, they still had smiles on their faces. It made me feel wonderful.

There is sadness in my life. There are things happening that I have absolutely no idea of how I deal with them, but I am praying and working on staying in optimism and wisdom. The best thing to do when you don’t know what to do, is wait.

To view the film for free check out the information below.

A case of medical pluralism
A documentary film by Hugo De Burgos
IMACI AND THE CENTRE FOR SOCIAL SPATIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
PRESENTS HOLISTIC HEALING IN THE OKANAGAN VALLEY
A DOCUMENTARY FILM BY HUGO DE BURGOS FEATURING DR GABOR MATÉ, DR NAOMI MCPHERSON, DR SINGH SANDHAR INDIGENOUS HEALERS AND MORE THAN FIFTY HOLISTIC HEALERS IN THE OKAKANAGAN VALLEY
ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK BY SERGE MAZERAND
NARRATED BY RALPH MILTON 90 MIINS ENGLISH COLOUR, CANADA 2013
Dec. 17, 2012 Lecture Theatre
(Admin 26) UBC Kelowna campus
6 p.m.
Free admission Seating available on a first-come-first-serve basis
Holistic Healing in the Okanagan

Mundane, repetitive, stuck, cycling gray
bare cutting into the sky
branches dividing the flat planes.

Over two yards a tree
is busy with dead small leaves
standing texturing the view somewhat.
I seek continuity of
over and over the same
gestures, habits of delusion.
Mind full of thought crows
brassing sounds
comparisons, directions
attempts to keep me scared
and small.

One day looks like the next
a river’s flat silver surface
all turbulence underneath
where water meets the rocks.

To be still, quiet and accepting of one state or another is a monumental practice. My urge to weave a story keeps presenting itself. Today after a month of taking my laundry to the laundromat because some mysterious parts are no longer functioning in my second hand washing machine I see my mind is at work. Up there, in the tree head I weave narratives.

We create turbulence

The higher place is where I try to stand. I call it the balcony view. I picture myself standing on a balcony looking down at my thoughts as if I were a cultural anthropologist and the primitive society was ME.
As I bagged up the laundry, I checked in. So far so good. No story. Just putting the bags in the car. Then I remembered the times when I was in Europe doing laundry and as a grad student. So here was the version I was constructing: I was on an adventure. I was going to a new place.

At the laundromat, I realized I had no soap. That made me laugh. It had been so long I guess I imagined the soap just trickled down like pixie dust from the soap fairy.

When I went next door to the deli/grocery store, a sample pushing woman approached me in her pseudo maid’s outfit lofting a silver tray. After exchanging information about my gluten intolerance, she ran off to check on the two miniature hamburger shaped chocolate eclairs. They were “safe”. She gave me both.

On the way back to the laundromat, I breathed deeply, looked at the sky and thought about how wonderful my day was. Two amazingly delicious, sugar saturated chocolate eclairs melted in my mouth one after the other. The machines were gigantic and tipped on their sides could be a power smart car. Fast. They were done in 20 minutes. I put the wet clothes in the car and drove home singing to the Glee CD I am determined to wear out.

So I did create a story. It was a story of finding the adventure in the flat places of winter. It was a story of seeing my being alone as being free. It was a story of unexpected pleasure when I dropped the turbid drama weavings, the cat’s cradle of catastrophe.

The washer still isn’t working. The repair men went away but after looking at the back of my dryer they explained that the luke warm hours of turning are a result of bad venting. Because they came today, I will have both the washer problem and the dryer problem resolved.

As I sit here with the tepid light coming in my window, I know that there are more things that will appear to be unrepaired, too slow, stultified which are in fact only incubating. Under the shell, under the soil there is growth going on. And that is a story that I allow to dance in my head.

I was awakened by a dream of having three children in an Eastern culture. I was leading meditation practice with the natives in a hill tribe. Authorities did not like having the populace learning to drop the drama, to step away from the story and to turn inward for peace.

deconstructing beauty

They swept down upon the village and took each person and cut off his or her hair by scraping the scalp with a sharp sword. I said to my children,” This will hurt. Turn within to find a place to be that cannot be touched.”

When I was fully awake, I realized that much of what has been playing out in the world had permeated my dream state. The urge to believe that weather systems, earth quakes, governmental repression is somehow new and ultimately destructive was obviously leaving its dirty tracks on the clean floor of my existence.

I follow what is going on politically and international. Attempting to share events with others who are cut off by reposting information appearing on twitter and facebook, is an urge I follow out of a desire to help. Imagining what could be going on is always the path into even greater drama despair.

darkness and light

Those times when I have stood up in the classroom or at staff meetings; or during professional development days to say, “This is bull shit,” are from a deep place in my soul. The other aspect of my personality is the good girl. I want to be stroked by the powers that be and told I did every single thing properly. I want a sticker on my chart.

Well if that isn’t a game plan for internal conflict, I don’t know what is. So I share what I believe to be accurate information. I watch my mind and my thoughts. Taking positive action so that I can live “as if” becomes easier as I grow.

But the dreams that come out of an unsafe and war zone childhood can awaken me. My mind is telling me that I am not protected in the world and that speaking out is dangerous.

My sub-conscious habits have lead to isolating myself and staying quiet until I burst into some Joan of Arch speech and immolate myself upon my own burning stake.

I stepped out of bed with the dream still clothing me and attended to the rituals of self care. I attended a class on self development.

And ultimately, I mused on how much of North America is just growing up. We have not had our country over run by famine, by attacking hoards (an experience of the Native Indians). We have not seen our government overtly shooting people in the streets in a systematic manner. Europeans, Asians, South Americans and Africans have survived every type of stressor that can be named. But my generation, the baby boomers and after have not had a depression before. Some escaped the Viet Nam war experience and were too old for the Middle Eastern experiences.

So in the long run, perhaps much of what is happening now is part of the process of learning responsibility. It is about seeing that life is challenging. There is a wisdom that grows when hardship comes. And it is the kind of wisdom that can lead people to tweet, “The electricity is out, can’t leave the apartment.found out I have a boy friend living here with me.”

So when our world is shaken up by earthquakes or anything else, we turn to one another. We turn within to find a place of peace. We learn to see the brilliant, shining every day beauty of what we once thought of as a boring normal day.

look closely

The dream taught me that I don’t have to live in fear and that I don’t have to worry about “authority figures” changing my identity. Those are all images from my past, from my dark places. There is no drama. There is only turning to find who is there to love.

Always, always the question is, “What am I learning?”

Yesterday I had another nothing day. I went out to an appointment and had the car loaded with books I intended to read and take notes from. I had a list of what I call the “this and that” of life in my head. Small things left undone end up like an assembly line at a factory just filling up until it ceases to move. When there are enough items that only take a few minutes, then I tackle them all on the same day. So I had that intention.

I returned home, sat down and could immediately feel the last two nights of short periods of sleep in my body.

Somewhere in between seasons hung outside. It wasn’t raining. It wasn’t snowing. The sun wasn’t shining. The air was a dripping dull gray. My mind kept circling back to, “I can start now.” But I was hungry so time for late breakfast at 1 pm.

maple leaves sudden shift to autumn

After reclining on the couch watching crap TV for a while, my mind started its tick tick the list again but I couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to even check in and see what mind was putting on a list. It was like some background furnace noise blowing through my head space.

I read a bit of my book, I fell asleep for a while, I spent two hours on Facebook, I took the nail polish off of my left thumb then lost my focus. Thank God I had to pee because that got me up to clean the bathroom since I was already there and couldn’t be bothered to sit down and then get up AGAIN to clean. Walking past the washer, I started a single load before I sank back into the warm, worn flesh of the leather couch.

Thinking about marketing, my web presence, my web site, how I needed to “feed the blog” this week, make a poetry video, clean up some poems for the reading Saturday night. Oh! Now the things that I was not doing were becoming more clarified. The shapes through the mind fog were starting to sharpen into discernible entities.

My body was sore from working out every day for five days. So I fell upon the default rescue thought. If I am building muscle then not doing anything is what my body needs in order to repair. So while I am thinking I am not taking action, by not taking action I am allowing my body to take action.

intense colors signal an ending

There! I did it. Like a magnificent athlete, trained and conditioned. My mind can create a doing out of not doing. It is not about resisting the busy body music. It is a care taking.

But I wasn’t buying it. My internal dialogue was continuing the argument. The only thing you are successfully doing is converting time off into yet another item on your list. So you are trying to be working toward your goals even when you are not. Impressive.

At this point, I was exhausted by not doing anything at all with my day so I went upstairs to bed to read a motivational book about focus, commitment to goals and daily effort. Yes. You heard me. Even as I was rolling over in the down covers to take a nap, my mind was saying, “Good job. You are motivation yourself.”

If there were a gold medal for cognitive dissonance, I am in contention for it. Because I am always in contention with myself. I was even too blecky to sit meditation. The last thought before my second nap was, “Well this is some kind of meditation, isn’t it?”

So today I feel that I can get so much done because I rested yesterday. I have a list in hand. The “this and that” items such as buying a tiny bulb for a dark lamp are all written out on the notebook page. I have inventoried my web presences which I intend to realign to one another, reconstruct my marketing plan.

veins like river beds on the earth surface of the leaf

Are these days of no action easy for me? No. The guilt and the internal nattering are not relaxing at all. But I say to myself as if I were a space traveller that it is what the other earthlings do. It doesn’t seem to set them back that much. And after all, I can cross “rest up” off of my list now.

Better get out and rake those leaves.