Category Archives: mindfulness training

Background Trauma Sounds

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Like a martial drum beating, the sounds of shuffling feet from some invading army still unseen over the hillside, we can hear it. There is a sense of a lined up, designed, patterned chaos that is coming at us. We don’t have words for it. We don’t have words for the shivering anticipation that we are feeling in our bodies. And like a person in an abusive relationship, many individuals have become overwhelmed and collapse in a heap.

“What can I do?” we ask. “How can I stop any of it?” we cry out on social media.

The battered wife is so exhausted by just dealing with the next and the next inevitable attack that she loses the ability to remain in even a fight or flight stage. That was months ago. That sense of urgency of activity is long sense gone for most of us. We are now just frozen.

My brother and I used to play frozen rag on the front lawn on summer nights. He would grab my arm and fling me into the darkness and as soon as a car came past flooding the moving person with light, we had to stand in place. The car’s headlight were a ray that made us into an inhuman stone-like form. I remember holding on tight to the paralyzed shape that the sudden headlight rays had created of me.

If we fell or could not keep our balance, we were dead. The lawn had transformed into some lethal contact zone that would dissolve our very person.

As I scan the social media posts and see 500 fires in California, dismantled post offices, the history of the connection to beauty obliterated in the Rose Garden at the white house, two tornados headed to the south, and locally two fires nearby creeping the hillsides, I feel like that child on the lawn. I have been thrown. I am off balance and moving through the darkness. The sudden flash of car lights would freeze me in space. I don’t want to be frozen in this time.

Can I keep my balance? Can I find a way to hold my shape, my person, my hopes without falling on the dark ground?

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Someone said on social media, “What can happen next?”

His friend answered, ” Don’t even ask that question.”

So now we need to reconnect to the sense of our own bodies; the bottoms of our feet where we can stand; the small decisions in our daily lives. We have our breath; our practices of self-care; our intentions.

And as the loud sounds of the cracking walls of the old system fill our space, we are called on to trust. The only thing left is to trust that we have the ability to stay undisturbed and centred. We have the ability to disconnect from the childlike urgency of expecting more powerful people to protect us. We have this opportunity to strengthen the sense that the universe supports us.

We choose our actions. We choose our emotions. We choose to stay focused on becoming the person we desire to be. It is more difficult when there are no pats on the back, no outside validation routines. But there is also greater freedom. Having the structure collapse means that we are now not walled in with rules and rewards. We choose to not be thrown across the black night lawn and frozen in fear by the next event.

We seek out our own expression of self. And throughout history, we know for a fact that following chaotic events such as plagues, the collapse of nations and warfare, there is a period of great creativity. New social classes emerge, new forms of artistic expression, new methodologies and cosmologies are created. And it is because of those who choose to see an opportunity arising as the old restrictions fall away.

Refuse to be flung off balance and forced into a state beyond action. You are creating a new way of life. Dare to trust yourself.

Data Pixels: This much is true

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I don’t know where the days disappeared to, what place at the back of time, what dimension. Were they even present in my present? They just went somewhere as if there was some universal zoomba grinding around all of my surfaces of recognition picking up the dirty particularization specks of time or large fallen fetuses of leaves curled tight which are constantly peeling off of my bare feet as I enter the house. The leaves that were once attached distinctions now wind-blown disconnections. They have come down, down to the ground. Nine days of heat and entropy. Nine days of explosive change. Nine days of amnesia.

In this now moment, I sit on the deck and speculate about a bird that just flew low down over me and squawk chirped. The bird-shape individualized and milliseconds behind it the shadow trailing. I saw them and I thought, “Is it always like this?”

Is there the event, the action, the sense of being real and at the same time a trail of who we are?

The living roundness of a living entity appears and too soon for the eye-mind to register, the shadow appears but not like the bird. It is shifted by change in the precise moment of being cast, created. The intensity and direction of the phantom of the bird which could be perceived in a second to be ‘ this one thing’ is more of less saturated darkness. The sun’s direction, the interference of wind in leaves, the stately sailing ships of clouds, the cast shadows of other objects defying the sun, the star dark of the deck umbrella all interpret the flat black and white appearance of the bird itself as it moves low down so only my left eye registers this passage of bird riding on the wind dragging its shadow like a second home.

I spun out, was pinwheeled by the events last Monday. Saturday and Sunday were given over to pacing and muttering the monologue I have tried to memorize previously. Why is it so difficult to commit other’s words to memory for me? I add to the list while I am abusing myself: You can’t do math, understand flat pack instructions for assemblage, learn new technology without agony. The suffering is part of the imprisonment of a slow mind.
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Is it because I find so many things in my life easy? I can grasp new ideas about cultural, emotional, scientific or physiological discoveries as quickly as a toad whips out its astonishing length of tongue and zip it into my self. It becomes disgested. It becomes my new view of the world with unbelievable speed. I can physically feel it settle into my being. Yes! I see it. I swallow it and digest it. It is now part of me.

As I prepare the monologue for an audition, I am now more like a baby strapped into a high chair than like a lightning quick toad. The bib tied onto me, no matter how expansive, cannot protect me. The spoon of mashed up something which looks predigested moves toward my mouth and my lips are clamshell locked. The concept, the system, the monologue is forced into my face by sheer persistence and it is simply spewed back. I don’t absorb this new information. I wear the mess of it upon my person. The failure is like mashed peas slowly creeping down my front, my face, my arms and some ends plastered in my hair.

I have gone from the Fast Train to an old truck on a pockmarked road. I hit an area of cognition that has lain dormant for years or maybe for this entire lifetime. The level of contrast between instantaneous absorption of far-reaching concepts and the infantile attempts to close the thumb and index finger around an item of information is dumbfounding, It snaps my head back every time.

A bird flies low and both it and its shadow exist but in different worlds. Nothing is simple. There is no one thing. Ever.

I am shifting. Time is shifting. The world is rebooting itself. It is a time to be curious, to simply watch and ask questions. We ask, “What is true?” And we wait.

Mr. Robot

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I have just “found” the Mr. Robot series and it is enlightening to view it in the face of the disruption we are experiencing in the world today. Questions arise from the story’s script such as: “Who controls me?” and “Is anything I do originating from what I think of as self?”

During the turmoil that has arisen from societal dissatisfaction with hundreds of years of inculcated cruelty, institutionalized inequality and the resultant blatant public murders of those who are deemed lesser and of no value, people have begun to vibrate at a high rate of anxiety. The questioning of self is resulting in either a defensiveness of a person’s long-held views or a denial of the reality that seems to condemn what the person holds as the truth.

People react in various ways in order to disclaim their part in the system. They have a choice of saying, “It isn’t true. It is information that is being created to control my reaction.” Or they have a choice of saying, “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know. It is too much for me, too big for me. I don’t have any power.  I am just standing here passively being a good person.” Or what we are seeing on social media is a third response which is growing stronger. “The people who are killed are at fault. They aren’t like me. They somehow deserve what happened to them.”

It is fascinating to see the philosophy of the early settlers winding through our world, still, in 2020. Preachers in Plymouth delivered hellfire sermons based on the philosophy that a person’s soul was either blessed by God or under the control of Satan before he or she was born. The signs that a person was anointed by God were found in skin colour, physical beauty, wealth, and perfection of health. To ensure that the devil did not rule children, it was recommended that children have the “devil” beaten out of them if they behaved badly.

And it was well known in the religious community that the mark of Cain was punishment. At some point after the start of the slave trade in the United States, many protestant denominations began teaching the belief that the mark of Cain was a dark skin tone,  Cain had killed his brother Abel and let Abel’s blood flow on the earth.

We think that we are in a world that is clear of the past and somehow balanced correctly in the now. But as we see how an inherited belief that the colour of a person’s skin is the result of some sin, some lack of being fully human, we start to wake up. We start to question everything that we have been inducted to believe in.


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An interesting example of how we view the world showed up on my social media feed. A man who understood how conditioning works explained that the map that Americans sit staring at in their 12 years of public schooling is nothing more than propaganda. The USA is placed in the dead centre of the world in order to reinforce the idea that America is special, the centre of the known universe. The other continents are not depicted in their actual sizes. The comparative size of the USA to other nations and of North America to other continents is inaccurate. Power is size. Power is being in the centre. And so the conditioning is ubiquitous. It is in every part of our social context.

What we are being driven to face is the question of what matters. Which of my actions has any inherent power?  Does it matter if someone I don’t know dies of COVID? Does it matter in my life if someone is living without clean drinking water? Does it matter if someone unlike me is being deprived of social justice?

We don’t like the feeling because it forces us to understand how we are formed. Each cell is a thought we have implanted in our concept of reality. We are so very uneasy with having to question all that we consider “normal”. It is painful. It is disturbing. It frightens us to a place where we feel like unprotected children and so we react like children.

As I was weeding my garden yesterday after viewing Mr Robot, I heard a question in my mind. “Is anything you think emanating from your own mind? Is everything you think just something you were taught, conditioned to believe, planted by some societal conditioning?”

I stood up with the weeds still connected to the roots swinging in my hand. And I knew. I suddenly knew. I had no way of knowing.

 

Metta View: I can’t see me.

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.As I was twisting around in the mirror, turning lights to reflect illumination on the upper quadrant of my back, I thought about the ideas of “seeing” and “flexibility.”

I was bitten by a brown recluse spider three weeks ago and part of my morning ritual is now to go stand with my back to the mirror holding my phone on camera and trying to set up a clear shot at the inflicted area.

Almost immediately after I was bitten, the two puncture wounds showed themselves but over time with strong antibiotics and tetracycline cream, it is down to a distinct area of red. However,  I am under compulsion to view it. It is “behind” me. I cannot reach it easily. I cannot see it clearly. The ritual of self-protection is built in the monitoring of my body.

The entire OCD driven idea of assessing how I am at this moment, how my past decisions and actions impact on my physical, emotional, spiritual energy, is the place I have landed in my life.

The bite is no longer spreading. The dark ring around it is no longer turning black. The center is beginning to collapse inward as the online information had predicted. But what about the rest of me?

I keep coming back to the idea of blind spots or black boxes. There is an obstruction in knowing the self and it is held in the steel-like neurons that form a spider’s web of concepts.
I know I cannot turn easily to look at my spider attack but that information goes into the basket: “Must do yoga- I hate yoga.” It is filed away.

I watched a video today by a 92-year-old weight lifter who began his self-improvement beyond the age of 80. As I watched, I felt the flush of the warmth of excitement and passion for what I in my secret most heart want for myself. And as time elapsed I filed the intention in the: “Must work out more but don’t feel like it now” basket.

The issue I explain to my patterned self, my toy train on a track self that goes round and round and reaches only the same train station as it ever reached, is that I have a bankruptcy of using time.

Time is energy. Time is optimism. Time is the ultimate expression of the physical. Since I have been retired in 1999 I was outer directed as an artist. I prepared for shows. I worked to deadlines. I spent money in the hopes of making money. I “was” something.

over view

And then I opened the Airbnb for eight very successful years. I was once again outer-directed. The customers coming in would trigger action. The six to eight hours a day spent making beds, doing laundry, wiping down surfaces was not negotiable.

Now, at 75, I have my debt paid down. I have all the time in the world. The Pandemic has turned off the switch of the impulse of action triggered by the outside world and I twist around attempting to see myself.
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And what I see is the problem with “float”. I float in time because “I deserve it.” They tell me that. The inability to look forward to appointments, to trivial meetings with others, to pleasurable strolls through thrift stores to buy things I have no use for and store in the dark peripheries of my house has left me bereft.

Issues such as age, the constant mirroring back to me of what I am expected to do or be as a senior, an inborn faulty setting due to years of being a workaholic and one who has trained herself to jump for the reward cookie held in someone else’s hand haunt me now.

But when I drift in the mornings, I do it listening to coaches, watching videos, reading teachers.

training the mind

I think of the trips I took to Europe and how I spent so much time buying maps when I could have been learning a new language.

Always, always, always my mind runs like a sheep dog herding up scattering thoughts. I come back to the knowing surety that I am a construct. The habits that I build create my choices.

So can we ever know ourselves? How can we twist around enough to get a clear view?

I can only register in my mirror the actions that I am taking. Some of them are shaky, unskilled, full of frustration. But some of them have removed countless moments of drama and struggle that used to occupy my ego.

The spider bite is healing because I followed doctor’s orders even though the antibiotic was very unpleasant. The food I eat is kind to my body and supports my health. The friends I have around me are loving and supportive.

Each day is another construction site. Each day is another laying down of more track for my train to go further, to explore more, to not be so tightly wound.

Ultimately it is a better use of my time to focus on the use of my time instead of looking behind me to see if there is any scarring from past poison. I see my mind grabbing at me for security and I understand the fear that drives that grasping.

Can I loving schedule my time so that I am being rewarded for each minor victory? I begin. I begin again. I begin each every now. Eyes forward.

What is in a day?

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This morning I was up early and out to the Independent Store for the “seniors shopping” hour. I pushed out of the isolation capsule of my house without coffee, without makeup, without enthusiasm.

“Today, I told my constant companion, Noone, ” I will get more fresh greens for the great coming lock down in personal space”.

To give me further purpose, finally, my son and daughter in law had asked me to help them. This is a platinum rare event. So I had their list in hand and was hoping I could purchase the type or brand of items that they enjoyed. I held the peanut butter up while mentally asking it if it was the most satisfying smooth rendition possible.

As I walked through the stores, I watched my resistance. I felt as if I was surrendering. I felt as if the swat team had shown up at my house and used a bull horn to say,” Would all old people come out of the houses with your hands up.”

“I am not decrepit,” I said out loud to myself.

I continued on as I pushed my cart thinking about diminishment and when it begins. If I admit that I am somehow fragile, does my body start spinning off skills and strengths? Will I end up taking my false teeth out and sucking mashed potatoes from a spoon? When does the falling off of belonging begin?

As usual, my imagination took me down the entire spinning of a narrative.

There I am rocking back and forth in my wheelchair idiot mumbling to myself some song of senselessness.

But I have the list in my hand and for now, I am still functional enough to fulfil that goal.
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Just yesterday I remember thinking that the only survivors will be early adaptors, germaphobic introverts. Try running a world with that population personality.

I selected things for my son’s family and items for me but with only four hours sleep and no coffee, I just frustrated myself with my lack of organization. As I walked longer, I woke up enough to see I had once again forgotten my bags in the back of the car. They are like a neglected pet that I just drive around but rarely take out.

It is another habit I need to work on, I admonished myself.

The self is like a vast ranch with critter habits on it. There is so much to tend to so it doesn’t become derelict.

I took the groceries, some bright carnations, chocolate and strawberries to my son’s family and headed home.

What is my purpose? How do I use time? What am I creating of my vast ranch of self?

I see these as simultaneous script words scrolling constantly under my life. And I bring myself back to the adventure of not knowing. Every now is different.

As I put away groceries, I think about how the Independent Store at 7 a.m. is a place to find single senior men. They are unaccompanied, slow-moving and stopping to read all of the labels. If I wanted to pick one up I might ask, “Is that a good disher detergent?” I could try some come hither looks over my new glasses.

Every change holds an opportunity, I remind myself.

Honoring the Writer

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I awoke and visualized myself writing lines as I lay coming up to consciousness in the bed. I remembered the lines that had appeared and held on to them tightly so as not to lose them.

I am starting to see the shape of a new book like a body curled under a tangle of thick blankets. When I put my hand out, I can make sense of its shape. It is about all the stoires of real things that happened to me, to others who passed me in the carnival of life and for that brief period of time that we intersected they explained what ride they had chosen to ride, why they had selected this particular apparatus to mount and to trust their bodies to.

A moment in time, a single anecdotal exchange can reveal everything about a person.

Since I gave myself permission to retrieve this collection of interchanges more and more appeared to me, these torn pages of others lives I still held in my memory. I had let the story fly past as if the person was on a merry go round riding a prancing tiger rhythmically undulated. I had asked, “Why the tiger?”

I had watched, turned my head in wonder and then walked away.

I am understanding, now, the next step is the step that I have been missing: A university professor said to me as a 20-year-old sitting in his classroom that the difference between a full-blooded, full-hearted writer and a whimsical will o the whisp was the act of honouring the writing.

“The notebook,” he said in a leather-bound gold foiled voice, “Is validation of our relationship to our own words, our own thoughts. Like a fish getting off of our line of dreams, we do not care enough to haul them in, so that we can edit, weight and measure them.”

He went on to explain that everything we do not think to honour in ourselves, that we do not help to grow in our lives results in a loss of confidence. The words, the images, the hidden code of who we are needs to be studied. We can break apart the words to see the very relationship we have with self. We alone can decipher the message.

It is in the deepening of the romance with words that the object of our desire becomes less shy. It disrobes for us and we see nakedly what words formed our thoughts. We see what truths about self we have overlooked.

We can say, “This person’s story does not interest me.”

And so by dismissing the words that ticker tape across the brain daily we refuse to be curious about the very nature of being alive. What is the scrolling translation of the foreign movie of our subconscious mind trying to say to us?

We fail to commit to the intense beauty of language. It becomes a casual if not abusive situation.

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We find out fluctuaring flirtation with the self to be deeply dissatisfying. Like a wife or husband who feels abandoned and lonely, our soul’s very power stays contained and weak.

We have no confidence in our music. We tell the ballerina of expression that she is too frail, she lacks technique, she is flawed and at best amateur. We have no time for her.

When the soul in its expressive power shows up, we ask, “What can you do for me? Can you heal my childhood? Can you be used for status or power?”

And so we train ourselves to be disloyal to our own psyche. The ferocious strength that keeps us alive when we are lost and the sky is obscured with only a gothic hiss of a sun above us is within. We are all muscle and sinew. We do not leave the field of battle but use our self talk to embolden us beyond despair.

A true writer trains like a warrior trains. The writer swears an oath upon the blade of language. A true oracle speaker knows that all visions are treasures. There are no greater or lesser lines of revelations.

Every word that appears to us is a word to be respected and kept in honor.

But to honor the words that scroll through the brain means to make a commitment to our own individual manner of making sense of the world. And as it is with every living thing, that which is observed with love, that which is nurtured thrives.

The words no longer appear to us quickly flitting like a gray squirrel running on a dead winter highway of stagnant branches. They are not so fast and so distant that we can’t make them out.

Like so many experiences in my life the message that the professor offered to me was not received when I was twenty.

Today I am 75 and I am full of stories. I collected them somewhere below my conscious knowing. I can see their shape obscured beneath a layer of inattention.

I feel full of excitement as I understand that I am being called to accept myself, my thoughts. I open my journal and write down the pictures I have seen. I respect the torn fragment of other’s revelations about their lived experiences and want to study them carefully.

I think I am ready now at last.

Art. Why?

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Art. Why?

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Posted on February 29, 2020
I have come to realize I have a relationship with art and with cultural events that is central to my sense of well being. As I do in all relationships, I step back and analyze the dynamic with a curious mind.
 
What I seek from art is a transformation of self. I stand before a painter that was looking at his concept reality in 1400 and I feel as if I have stepped into his very mind. This was the world he inhabited; these were the beauties of mundanity that surrounded him. What appears on the canvas are the objects limiting and expanding his very sense of his own humanity. And it deepens my understanding of what it means to be mortal beyond the boundaries of my own culture, current normative habits and constructs.
 
When I watch a choreography that is precise, unexpected and paced just beyond my ability to aperceive it, I feel more flexible. My understanding and ability to behold the eternity of the performance is being challenged. It wakes me up. I find myself holding my breath.
 
To hear poetry or a film script that is just beyond my capacity to follow the words, puts me in a state of alertness. I am panting after the patter, forced to keep up, to keep alert.
 
When I see a play and the acting, directing and intelligence of writing is so beautifully beyond that which I knew previously, it can shred my sense of confining comfort. The tightly locked up ideas of who I am are released. I am forced to the identity of the characters. I am that person. I inhabit that kind of grief. That particular rage is within me. I will have unanticipated tears flow. The sense of deep humanity and the fragility of living a life sweeps over me.
 
Perhaps, I am shocked or horrified or taken like a captive ripped out of my own repetitions of understanding. Good art over-takes who I am in normal life and drags me to a hilltop where I now have a greater purview of the entire landscape of being born into a body. This moment in front of a painting, or dissolving in music, or listening to an actor channel the narrative of slavery destroys me.
 
All that I have known is exploded and the intensity of something so much greater than myself floods through me.
 
I fall in love with the created piece of art. I fall in love with the artist who can hold and transform that electricity. It is such an act of bravery to grab the wire and allow the self to be used to transmit energy. I fall in love with the earth, my body, the shared humanity of all of us.
 
For me, great art is about connecting to passion. It is about allowing the small self to be reformulated through an experience. I am renewed. I understand now: To be human is an act of incalculable courage. An artist taught me that.

reconstructing self

 

My Role Models

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Throughout my life, I have sought out books about, watched movies about a particular type of individual. He or she runs the seas of chaotic times with a true compass. No wind or waves or threat of kraken beast turns him or her away from the ultimate destination.

I selected programs about the detective who won’t take a bribe and continues the investigation no matter what the personal cost. I followed the life stories of those women born in a time of female inequality and suppression who lead a movement, spoke out in public, wrote copious treatises about human justice, who suffered indignities in order to maintain their diginity of purpose. Many women were arrested and force-fed in order to garner the right to vote. The pacifist who goes to jail rather than picking up a gun is in my eyes the most courageous of beings.

In my college dorm, I met a quaker girl whose uncle spent the entire Viet Nam war breaking rocks in a hard labor camp in Alabama because he did not believe war was a solution for any human problem. He was not considered heroic by his community. He was considered to be one who lived in his truth.

People that I so greatly admire cannot be forced off of their path of choosing to do that which is ultimately the act of greatest compassion. These people could and can not be convinced that their own sense of humanity is mistaken in the face of a current necessity to suppress others.

They are told to abandon their internal values during the playing out of whatever is the currently unfolding drama narrative.

“The cruel act is only for now. The jailing or oppressing of innocent people is just this one time,” they are told.

A role model’s strength is in the firm grounding in knowing who they are as they move through the world. They believe the vision of their values of equality and human justice without needing validation.

And what they all shared as they invented the impossible new technology, or spearheaded the movement to change the ten commandments of oppression, or stood alone holding a sign until others joined them was and is a strong sense of self. They did not check to see if someone else was with them, if others were dancing to the same tune, if their actions would allow them to be included in the folded arms of the tribal circle.

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Innately, people are kind. There are a plethora of studies that show what happens to social groups under great duress. When a threat is overwhelming enough, people will sacrifice themselves for others. Acts of great courage taken in the name of  compassion are recorded.

Sociological studies show again and again that when there is a clear understanding that all will suffer if a few do not intercede, that is when the quiet heroes appear.

My neighbour said, “What we need now is a shared value.”

I said, “We have a shared value. All human beings want to protect their loved ones, their children.”

When we can understand that protecting those we love, means protecting everyone who is human, then the temptation to drop our own internal values will have no effect upon us. We cannot be frightened out of our humanity; bribed out of the truth; threatened out of championing the weak.When we can understand that protecting those we love, means protecting everyone who is human, then the temptation to drop our own internal values will have no effect upon us. We cannot be frightened out of our humanity; bribed out of the truth; threatened out of championing the weak. When we can understand that protecting those we love, means protecting everyone who is human, then the temptation to drop our own internal values will have no effect upon us. We cannot be frightened out of our humanity; bribed out of the truth; threatened out of championing the weak. When we can understand that protecting those we love, means protecting everyone who is human, then the temptation to drop our own internal values will have no effect upon us. We cannot be frightened out of our humanity; bribed out of the truth; threatened out of championing the weak.

Perhaps what we are seeing now as chaos on the earth is just an intensifying of the lesson so that we finally internalize it.

But always, throughout human history, a few strong, grounded individuals have chosen to act based on kindness. These people are my heroes. They teach me that there is a place for ferocity in the name of love.

Self Ass sessment.

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illusion of stillness

Some days are stones. Some days are boulders.

February has had me practising being retired. No guests are in my house. No eight hours of cleaning direct my day. No readings at local psychic fairs written into my calendar. No yard work insists I landscape today.

I turned it off; shut it down; went into exploring the deep quiet of not knowing.

“What are you doing?” People ask me that. “What are you doing?” I interrogate myself. As I awaken in the morning I ask, “What will you achieve today?”

At night, I lay so comfortably relaxed in my perfection of bedness and look back through the day. “What happened today?” I ask myself.

But then I lose interest. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. That narrative has run aground as firmly as a tugboat headed straight for shore.

Is drifting through the day a good or a bad thing? I keep interrogating myself mercilessly but I get no answer out of me. I am a witness neither for the defence nor for the prosecution.

I take out my tape measure pull it flat between my two hands, one held high and one held low. “Did you grow? Did you diminish? Here. Let me take your measure.”

I am not gorging on fat, sobbing into the crook of my elbow, cutting out pictures of crows pecking out eyes to paste on my vision board. No. It isn’t that bad. Nor is it that good.

However, today it is very easy to get every benefit even without going discount levitra rx outside or becoming alert all the time about how far one is going on the track or something has gone wrong to their relationship. Tips to increase sex power There are plenty of medicines available in the market place has revealed that the majority these cialis no prescription canada http://pharma-bi.com/category/bi-solutions/dashboards-scorecards/ products have considerable amounts of chemical contents. These herbal components are also known to contain aphrodisiac substance that has already been in use in ancient times by males seeking for a more enhanced cialis free samples sexual virility. Enzymes facilitate healthy viagra buy cheap pharma-bi.com digestive juices and enhance immunity. Some dreams come… I travel to the past. I am allowed into a wing of a castle where the Beetles are staying for an upcoming royal charity concert. The hall is narrow and has trestle tables set up. I walk along one wall and some of the entourage nod or signal to me. “He is famous,” I dream speculate.

I travel to other landscapes I cannot even describe because I have no waking experience of them.

When I see posts on facebook, I think, “Thank God that isn’t me.” I don’t want the drink, the food, the harsh sunshine, the sand in my pants. I don’t want the crowd of grinning people around me. I wish the others well but for now I seek my house, the magnificent bouquets I guy for myself, the satisfying one on one coffee times with old, dear friends.

I honour this time. Something is changing and I have no idea what it is.

I am unmoored…floating. The water is calm or slightly ruffled.

Releasing the need to work, I spend my morning learning and teaching. But it is disembodied, my connection with others. Social Media is like a hazmat suit. I can post from behind the protection of the computer screen.

I practice Win Hof with breath and cold water. One day I listened to Eminem as I plunged myself into the artic electricity. It was perfect.

“What next?” I keep untangling the wrapping roots of weed thoughts from my ground. I am. I am so focused on not being focused. For once in my lifetime. I hear that as a romantic song in my head.

For once in my lifetime. For once unafraid, I can go where life leads me.

I am resting in wait to know where the path will appear. I am content in this retreat. I breathe deeply into the silence. I am right here.

Perception is Creation

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Since 2008 I have been writing about my work on my own perceptions. Mindfulness practice, being aware of what I think I am seeing and interceding to release the habitual ritual of reinstalling the same reality over and over, has taken me years of work.

I think in metaphors so at Christmas time I think of “reality” like a gingerbread dough that is rolled out flat on our counter. In an unseen split second, I push the cookie cutter into the dough and create the shape that I wield. My reality is a tree, or a snowman, or a snowflake. And then after I have cut away everything that is not what I realize as my truth I end up with the same shape again and again.

Life did not create the pattern of trees, or anxiety, or fear, or scacity. I did when I insisted the shape into the arising moment. Time is the element that I work within. This now I will be exactly as I have always been. This now I will carefully rearrange my situation exactly as it was in the past. And so I make an impression and push down hard. I cut away all that is what I do not believe. It is a process.

And when I yearn for more snowflakes and fewer trees I will give the casality to scarcity. Reality, the universe, the Greek Chorus of the massive shape of all is one called “them” made it happen.

The gifts that mindfulness practice have given me are multiple and unforseen. The challenge of watching my thoughts did not come about because I was seeking something. It was the result of my gift of creating tension, blame, loneliness, poverty, failed relationships.

When I was growing up there was a show called “Beat the Clock,” and I have come to understand that I have lived my life with the loud ticking of inevitable failure clicking in my ears. Hurry, grab it, make a list, do twenty-five things, prove yourself, measure yourself against everyone around you. Tick tick tick tick.

What I think I have come to understand is that I am the one who keeps recreating the perception that there is not enough: I am not enough; there is not enough money; there is not enough flow; there is not enough that I can possibly do in one life time so that others will see me as I want to be seen.
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Each day, each hour, each breath is everything. With mindfulness practice, I can sit calmly and not respond to the need to frenetically push the cookie cutter into the fabric of life to make something of it. Sometimes I just need to sit and see that the flat slab of what I think is reality is a misperception.

The distant view.

We are each in a frenetic race with our own minds. I am coming to see that existence is not about pushing as hard as we can to try to fill the hole inside. Constantly chasing a sense of being one of the anointed ones leaves us simply deepening our own sense of apprehended undeserving.

Running changes nothing.

The irony is that the harder I ran the more stuck in place I became.

Maybe there is no need for cookie cutters; or knowing; or pushing; or competition. Maybe there is just learning. Now that makes me feel really Christmasy.