The Joy of Grief

Stored grief, trapped grief, neglected and locked up in the basement or attic grief can be ignored. We are encouraged in our culture to imprison it immediately and never look upon its face again.

Stored grief becomes baseline anxiety. It haunts our system like a poltergeist. We may jump at sounds, flinch at a massage therapists touch, see personal attacks in the words or looks of another individual. Stored grief makes us frightened children. We are telling ourselves that we are not big enough, strong enough, mature enough, powerful enough to look at this grief with clear vision. Our culture tells us that we are not whole enough to experience the entirety of emotions.

Only some emotions are allowed in. But grief is already housed in us. We have suffered a plethora of grief stories by the time we are adults. It is a Netflix, Crave vastness of stories of loss, abandonment, physical pain. And we in our human condition are newborn soft. Our bodies are fragile. Our minds are untrained and nervous. Our yearnings are childish. We are walking the earth without armour plating.

And so IT happens. The loss shears away some part of our lives we thought was eternal. The abandonment occurs again and again. The insults to our spirits occur on a daily basis. The more that we are enduring, the more that we are obscuring.

Life strikes us

The only way that we can free ourselves of the fragility of our state is to understand it fully. The body will tell us when we are wounded. The breath will tell us when we are experiencing fear. In that moment, if we are to be adults, we must feel what is happening to us physically. We must stop and see the sadness that has just been triggered within us.

Thich Nhat Han says, “We must hold our grief like a baby.”
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To sit with the grief, the sadness, the wounding, the pain and hold it in our arms takes an adult spirit. To see that life costs us in so many ways and when the next loss appears, it is our duty to ourselves to hold it in our arms. And so we cry. And so we weep. We release the grief so that it will not haunt us every single day. We are unafraid to say that we are merely human. We are unafraid to say that right now, this day or this week, I am processing grief. It is different than clinging to grief so that we can get attention.

We can grow ourselves.

It is different than dragging grief behind us in the childish grip like a teddy bear.

We recognize the pain of being human when it arises so that we may release it. Only when we are no longer haunted by the locked up ghosts can we let the light and the joy in.

Let us shift the culture so that we allow others to feel both grief and, through releasing it, the joy that comes next. Anger is being worn like a cutting edge fashion statement at the current time.

And anger is neither here nor there.

Throw open your windows to all of life. Get rid of the ghosts.

Winter Stomp

Last night it rained. It rained violently, noisily outside my window. And when it paused, I could hear the wind tearing through the branches plastered with wet leaves. The air was cool and so I opened my window a hand’s width just to feel the movement across my body of the loving cold air. Yesterday for the first time, some of the leaves on my 60 year old maple tree turned red. It was as if a switch was thrown and all of the full on green clicked into another color. I don’t know when it happened. I wasn’t watching. I paid no attention.

my neighbourhood

The steady flow of guests from around the world continues to pass through my house. I hold space for them. I clean and put the crayon colored sheets on the beds while I say a blessing in my mind. “May you sleep deeply. May you heal. May you be at peace in this room.”

One room has the head of Quan Yin placed high above the beds looking down upon the constantly rotating guests. She blesses them as they rest between their days driving the long roads of British Columbia.

season shifts

One room has a Buddhist blessing on a scroll next to their bed. It is a gift from a caring neighbour to me so it is twice loving.

Yesterday I paused. I pulled myself off of the field of activity and benched myself. Naturally, I cleaned rooms and did laundry. Naturally, I did guest reviews and contacted new guests but I spent almost the entire day in New Zealand in a Netflix series. I sat on the beach with the characters and watched the waves. I moved down the streets with the Palm Trees and blue skies. It was a day of an alternative reality.

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winter silence

Once or twice I thought: “You are not working toward your goals.” But I easily dismissed the self-criticism.

When I awoke this morning, we had travelled to another season. Sometimes I see the house as a riverboat moving constantly to a new destination.

Today, Winter has definitely stomped into the valley. The hills are obscured by the gray that comes down on Kelowna in the winter. It is silent outside the windows. No tourists are yelling over their cars at one another about where they will meet their friends.

No dogs are barking or children’s laughter moves under my windows.

And I think to myself about pauses. I think to myself about the times that are not remarkable. Nothing in particular happened yesterday and yet everything has changed.
The transition from one form of energy to another is often unrecognizable. The moment when an old way of being is done and a new begins can be silent, still, and unobserved.

Winter is stomping into the valley and it brings the cold fresh air flowing in the windows. I think, “What next? What will happen next?”

What is Truth?

I am run over by the stories in my mind like a person standing in a raging crowd which is pushing through to some scarcity prize..So many versions of my life clustering the aisle of truth.

But when I check this blog, I see actually. I wrote only one entry in July and it has been a full month to the day since I last posted.

Where did the time go? What was I doing? Why did my intentions dissolve like the smoke from my incense burning in front of my Buddha statue. My mind has constructed a narrative which I see converges in three directions easily running along the ground in different dimensions.

What have I done? I sit asking myself. Every day I have prepared my airbnb for new guests. I have worked out three to four times I week. I have walked building onto my habit of walking until one week I hit 66 Kilometers of travel on my feet.

But. But. I excuse myself with the heat. My productivity falls when the temperature crosses the border line of 30 celsius. I say to myself… you are old Mother Williams… yes that poem by Lewis Carroll.

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
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Why, I do it again and again.”

So I have no brain or mindfulness when I excuse myself from my dreams. I placate myself that it is enough what I do because… and then I wander into the garden of blooming rationalizations and pluck a multifarious bouquet.

People plaster the sides of my reality with their “fun” billboards. At least, you should have fun. The call to tomfoolery is like a jingle played repeatedly on TV. I am instructed to adhere to the behavior of others… the hot sand, the stasis of seeking, the grouping to make trivializing conversation. None of that has ever held joy for me. I have always know I am an outlier, an alien being.

I stand on my head again and again and keep returning to the pervasive sense that I have played small; that I have taken the easy route; that I have somehow starved my future self of the glory that should be.

I have worked a seven day week since April and the business unfolds in front of me until the last week in October. The two hour retreats from the heat under the fan watching netflix is “wasted” time, I natter into my skull. “What are you doing?” I crow caw to myself.

And then I skip out to the garden and pluck the blossom excuses to put in water in a single vase. Oh they are beautiful those mix of mitigations.

So I know that I can trust myself so far. I can trust myself to do a teensy bit more than I did. I can trust myself to take slightly greater risks than I have. I can trust myself to stick my neck out a considered inch or two more.

Is that enough? I have no way of knowing the truth because I have stood on my head so long. At least, I know that much. I seek meaning. Fuck Fun.

Ramping Up Survival Mind

When I grew up it was assumed and true that all of us would get a job. The job would cover living expenses. The richest around us were in two level ranchers while the poorer in one level. The disparity was not blatant and in our faces every day. Then over time the competition became more fierce. The .01% made themselves fat and left the rest of us scrambling to exist.

It is like the general saying to his troops, “Look at the person to your left and the person on your right. They will most likely be dead at the end of this battle.” And so we go into battle to make a living, to afford a place to live, to find medical care. That battle ends up turning us against one another. It drives our anxiety levels higher and higher. We begin to fear one another more and more and look around to see who the “enemy” is.

Oh, the enemy is “not like us.” That person is darker, or speaks with an accent, or has a different religion, or has no home or does drugs… in some way is “not like us” and so we strike out. We say hateful words. We allow others to say hateful words around us. We spread the terror of one another and the more we see others yell out hatred, the more normalized it becomes.

We think, ‘Joe is yelling ‘shoot them in the head’ and I know Joe. It must be alright.” And so it becomes alright to hate horizontally… along the strata of the society that endures the same exclusionary punitive stressors. It becomes alright to say we don’t want them because they will hurt our children, or take our things, or break into our cars. The group that has locked us down into an economic prison is now safe from our anger. We are spending it on one another.
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Because we are in survival mode, we will not solve any of the problems because we are no longer capable of rationally solving the source of problems. We are feeding our pleasure centers with rage.

Those who own the economic system simply sit and watch us. It is working. We fail to solve the actual problems we are creating because we fail to think clearly, to study, to read, to bring solutions to our problems.

And this is what I see has changed since the time when I stepped out into the world as an adult. Survival mind is easily manipulated. The pressure is growing. We fear the future. But mostly we fear the others who have fallen off of the economic ladder and think they are coming after us. When we feed the flames of anger, we create no light.

June: Looking back

On facebook I see posts from 2013 reflecting my past to me. What I see is a person who was locked into recovery mode. I made choices. I saw the landscape from my own, particular vantage point. It was by no means the top of the mountain.

My marriage had imploded in 2010 and my massive lesson involved financial loss and impoverishment. My lesson involved recovering from an abdominal plasty and being weak and emotionally gutted.

As I see my posts in 2013, I see a person who is determined. This woman is starting her own business as an airbnb host. She is beginning to work out with weights. She is sitting in her lesson and feeling into it in a deep manner. She yearns for more peace, calm, wisdom and yet she knows she cannot live in it yet.

I liken what is reflected back to me as someone who is unfolding a map. I look it over and select destinations that I dare to put an X upon with no idea of how to get there.
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My relationship to her is much like it would be to a much younger self. She is afraid. She has no sense of what is coming to her. She has little sense of how much her childhood has wounded her. But I admire her decision to trust. She takes steps away from the “victim” story and is focused on growing her spirit. She is determined to lift weights, get into her body and create a stronger physical self. She is ferociously and singularly focused on paying off her debt and freeing herself from any taint of negative energy.

As I see her posts coming up on facebook today six years later, I am filled with admiration. She is determined to trust the universe and to believe that her reality and her energy can be shifted. She is not quite sure yet how that can happen. But she takes one step at a time and with those actions creates a pathway under her feet which does not appear until she lifts her foot.

Sometimes we come to believe in quantum physics and the ability to shift reality by the simple act of believing. We recreate everything when we learn to trust.

She is my hero.

Step Back: Learn it

Recently, I had a spate of disruptions in my communications with airbnb guests. Most had to do with new guests who simply did not know how to use the site.

I, as always, watched my reaction. Perhaps because it is hot and the air quality is crappy, perhaps because I did not take my “medications” which are mostly vitamins, perhaps because I have been on slow mode lately with sitting on the deck and relaxing, I was so much less than mindful.

WTF! I thought. Three people in two hours are making mistakes and blaming me for it. One guest I grabbed at the door. “Gentle, gentle”, I said to myself. I asked to see his phone and the airbnb app.

“There,” I pointed to his thread of communication on airbnb. “There is the message I sent you.” He claimed I had not sent it.

Wow. I was just reacting. I chose to feel frustrated and blaming. I chose to ask why the hell three people were not understanding how communication works on the site in two hours.

Today as I made the beds, did laundry, cleaned the house, and tended to the garden I was calmer and more reflective.

“What were you supposed to learn?” I asked myself.

What if I am attached to my expectations that I don’t need to repeatedly explain every detail to my guests. Does any variance from that smoothly running process over the past years need to cause me to flare?

So the expectations were the problem. The people were not the problem. I was.

I know full well that most are confused and anxious at the present time. My role as a host is to look quietly at how I can be in a place of service to others who are over whelmed. And the chaotic responses have amplified in the last two years. Reservations being made, altered, cancelled, and made again seems to be the new normal.
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So I stepped back and dropped the attachment to blame, anger, expectations.

What if I cannot possibly know what else is going on in a guest’s life?

I had a reassessment of how I use the site and decided that I needed to check in every time I gave a guest information. I need to ask, “Please indicate that you have received and understand the information that I sent.”

Asking for them to validate the address, the place they are to park, that they have received the door code does not protect me from chaotic, confusion, entitled behavior. Those are what can come with dealing with the public. But at least I have not left someone feeling unsure about what they need to do.

People no longer read the agreement that they sign on facebook by checking a box. After eight years of operating an airbnb, I have seen in the last three years that a person can say proudly and loudly, “Oh I never read those agreements.”

The society has shifted. New relationships to rules, laws, authority are formulating. And my job is to not rail against the shift but rather as gracefully as possible do what I can to help others be more secure as they use the site.

The very fact that this problem came up with three different people in two hours even though I had specifically built my host page to avoid them, means I need to adjust to the system shifts.

Attachment, expecting perfection from them or from me simply doesn’t work.

The mind is like a garden and must constantly be weeded.

And as today’s guest left and said, “The problem was all my fault,” I felt so good.

News Blast: You are not special

In my observation, the thing which most separates us from one another is the unseen childhood wounds we carry. At our core, we feel somehow damaged, handicapped, afraid and most definitely ashamed of who we are.

So we compensate. First we numb out the initial, deeply imbedded message that we are faulty… at fault for all the negative experiences that we have experienced. We hide them like flawed, black diamonds from ourselves and from others.

” No one can see this,” we say into our alone space.

And that is where the clawing, striving, anxiety fuelled attempt at validation begins.

We are working feverishly to show others that we are special. Our power is worn in our clothing; in our facebook posts; in our manipulation of other people; in our following others who promise to anoint us as “not flawed.”

It is a Caucus Race exactly as Lewis Carrol has created for us to see. We run faster and faster on the sand platform of our lives trying to get dry. But the one thing we could do to make ourselves achieve that goal is not understood or even seen.

Stop running where the waves are washing you wet. Stop running in the circle with all of the others who have released their individuality and mindfulness.

We are fuelled by adrenalin because we are literally running for our lives. We want to dry out. We want to be free of the stinging waves of our own thoughts. But we want to follow someone, that missing parent figure or anyone who looks confident, around and around in circles.

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We judge others. We see someone who is not good enough so that we can feel good enough. We point to others who are lost in mindless, repetitive trances of consumerism and distraction in order to black out our own mirror.

When we can settle down, stop running, figure out what it is that drives our fear and anxiety, we have a place to begin.

None of us is special. No one person can escape the pain of being a human being. No one person is living life without the gaping wounds of childhood, the breath taking dullness of shame that is internalized, no one person is extra-ordinary.

All of us are busy dressing up… like children. We dress up to look bigger, more powerful. And when that doesn’t work we hide in some dark closet. The two extremes are what most try out as a mode of operation in life. And neither works.

Each of us was born with the ability to intuit, to receive messages, to see with clear vision. Each of us was born with the ability to step forward and say, “I hurt. I disappoint myself. I want to be a loving being.” Each of us has magical powers and dark remorse.

Only when we can work with our own particular scars can we get to a place wherein we can let go of the comparisons. None of us is special, or more important, of more value. The entire issue of power, reputation, financial strength grows up in a society that can no longer connect to the earth. We begin to see ourselves as “consumer items.” When we are not grounded and connected in spirit, we ask others to put a price tag on us, as if we were a factory product.

“Tell me what I am worth,” the injured soul says.

Knowing that we all are in soul school and none of us escapes without the injuries, scars and lessons of being in a human body means we can relax. Now we can relax and simply do what we have been put here to do… which is to love. It is everything.

When We Return to the Place of Beginning

The unusual run for the horizon to see what I can see took me to Victoria. Why Victoria? First of all, I have had the most disciplined, locked down, repetitive existence imaginable since 2016 when I travelled to Los Angeles for the Airbnb Open Conference.

My monastic, quiet and focused existence was centered around paying down my debt. That goal has been achieved and now I lift my head to see what lies beyond the island of protection that I have made my home.

Where I am now

“What next?” I simply don’t know. And like all people who have the gift of obsession, I feel adrift in a rubber life raft with no land in sight, no goal shoreline to row toward.

And so I tricked myself by saying to self, “You like gardens. Go to Butchart.”

It worked. I was able to push through a construct of the walls of possibility I had built around me to buy tickets and get two airbnb stays in Victoria. That in itself was an achievement. I blocked off days in my own business so that I could be free of myself.

The small plane lifted me up and transported me. I decided to not react to the take off and landing. Usually, I feel dread, my heart rate increases and I help the plane in its transition by not daring to breathe. This time I made the choice to keep my breathing even and allow the knowing that I am protected to wrap around me. I would not be the same self, I promised.

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There arose in me such a feeling of no self that it kept me company. I was observer. I was one who did not demand anything. A place would manifest its presence with a sign over a door and I would go in. Every day I sat in Murchies drinking tea and watching people.

Frequently, I feel like a cultural anthropologist. Who are these people? How do they live? How do they relate to one another? What is this particular tribe enacting as a social ritual? I saw groups following unspoken guidelines for behavior. A couple sat with the girl constantly stroking her boy friend. She leaned into him, on him, demanding that he not abandon her. I saw older couples married for eons who automatically behaved as a team. He got the tray, he picked out the table. Or in another case she got the tray, she picked out the table. Even one couple where she moved from table to table until she found the perfect one and he trailed along behind with the tray. All of the small decisions defining the reality that people create were observable. The rituals have results.

What I found with the observing of myself is that I need to begin again. I need to find methods of growing more gently and with more support. I picked up the book A Tribe Called Bliss by Lori Harder and read it every day on my hiatus.

Other women… other women who are observing their lives without locking into the old washing machine swirling around and around of the same old stories could help me. Other women who are focused on becoming multi-dimensional and breaking away from pre scripted lives could make me stronger.

When I returned to Kelowna, I unpacked. I loaded in the laundry and let the soiled clothing of my trip spin themselves to freshness. I swept the thousand seeds from the Maple tree off of my deck. And I mowed the ankle deep lawn. As I went about these actions, I observed that this repetition is necessary and creates order. But I also understood that I need to make room for bigger goals, bigger dreams.

I fell asleep realizing that the disruption was absolutely necessary. I had to see who I was removed from the reality I had created from my repetitive rituals these last three years. There needs to be a starting line drawn in a life. I begin.

How Do I Protect Myself?

I have taken an uncharacteristic break in the usual rhythms of my life to go on a seven day trip to Victoria, British Columbia. While it is not an exotic holiday, it is a vast disruption in the habits I have established since 2017 of just staying focused on running my airbnb, keeping my house up to standard and writing.

What I have experienced with incredible clarity is how I protect myself. My sense of direction in a new place is non-operative. I have walked sometimes 15 Kilometers a day simply trying to find a chosen experience or place. Yesterday after great success of finding and eating breakfast at John’s Cafe I circled block after block trying to find a particular store. After 90 minutes I collapsed in a park next to a fountain. There were homeless around me also collapsed in the sanctuary..

A friend texted me and said, “Where are you?”

My answer was, “I have no idea.”

And so I got the opportunity to see how I react when I am purposeless, lost with no goal. I collapse. I am aware enough to know that outside my protective mindfulness practice the crab claws of anxiety lurk.

“If I did not know how potentially upsetting this experience could be, I would be able to quickly get into the early stages of panic,” I tell myself.

But I just observe all of the drama patterns and all of the old scripts with detachment. I am not feeling panic. I am not feeling anxiety. I am feeling grateful for the experience to learn about myself.

And my protective default setting is simply to give up on myself. The best way to not be hurt or disappointed is to release the desire for that thing I am reaching out toward.
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I am lost. I can’t find it. It isn’t worth it. This feels uncomfortable.

I gave up trying to find the New Age store, the Japanese restaurant, the castle that I circled around for almost two hours. I have also given up on trying to find a mate, on dancing, on being a published author, on pushing myself through from strong and fit to amazingly strong.
I have given up on needing close friends who reach out to me without me doing the heavy lifting. The desire for intellectual stimulation in real life has been exchanged for solitary study.

And I always use positive self talk to keep myself protected.

“Look what you do have? Look what you have done? Compare yourself to others. Just be glad.”

But I am not glad that I have settled into a state of fear of challenge. I am not glad that I simply give up trying to find that particular target that is causing me frustration.

My life is best described as monastic. But even monastic orders sailed into the world and took risks. Even the most abstemious intellectuals have had the courage to move forward when the knowing was obscured

As I sat in the park with a young man singing to himself and rocking, I thought about how my urge to “go home” to those things that I know is my way of protecting myself from possible damage and certain delight.

Over head in the park, I thought a bird was flying. But as I sat quietly, I realized it was simply a kite shaped like a bird. And it wasn’t going anywhere..

Other People’s Victories

When we compare ourselves to others we all lose. I am not as tall as she or he. They are not as short as I am. My skin is not as light, not as dark, not as tight, not as loose, not as radiant. We both come out behind.

No two people or things can ever reasonably be compared to one another. One stick is straighter and another branches. So which stick is the freak? Which broken off branch is not reaching its full potential as a manifestation of limb fractured upon the ground?

A comparison is always to designate the failure, the lesser than, the go home now, the “you are fired” mentality.

The mind that seeks to compare is the mind already set up to find fault. Is one of my ears bigger or smaller or higher on my head or lower than the other? Which ear is more perfectly an ear?

all in the brain

The ultimate ridiculous waste of intellectual calories is puzzling.

What is it we hope to achieve by comparing ourselves to others? What is the ultimate goal? Should we be thrown back into the waters before birth like some under limit fish?

To measure ourselves in terms of others is only in service of the puppet masters. The corporate holders of the psyche strings want us to feel that we are malformed, not special, lacking in some undiscovered attribute. It is when we are in that mindset that we buy a new oven or refrigerator in an attempt to catch up with others.

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My neighbour might have had a breakthrough in how to use the remote. Suddenly it clicked how to click the new device. She pushed through her frustration with technology and has begun to challenge her limits. It is as meaningful as if she had climbed a rock wall.

My friend might have set up a payment plan to pay off $25 dollars a month on the debt and it took every ounce of determination to get out of the mindset of rewarding pain by running up more debt. He has literally created a new future for himself. It is as transformative as if he had purchased a designer suit.

Some person sitting alone in front of the computer may have been in a frustration state so severe that that person wanted to scream and run away into the hills. But that person stayed in front of the blue screen light and learned how to use the new software. It was as frightening and courageous as if the person had gone sky diving, for them.

We can never know how much of a victory others are achieving in their daily lives if we are only using the status ruler. It tells us nothing. It tells us nothing about our own lives or about others.

As I sat at an intersection the other day I suddenly got the blinding clarity of understanding as car after car turned left into the lane next to me by travelling through an intersection. I thought of how each of those drivers had learned a skill, and decided to follow the rules of the society. Each was determined to keep his or her focus inside his or her own car and make that turn without danger to others. And I was flooded with love for the decisions each had made to make that turn. No one was racing to see who was first, who was the most deserving to make that corner first. It was an agreement to just keep the attention inside his or her own particular vehicle. And it was beautiful.

What if we could do that with out thoughts? Stay inside your own life, stay in your own lane and be focused on what major tiny achievements you are able to learn. Congratulate yourself and acknowledge how you pushed through a block of a challenge.

It makes us all so much more grounded and at peace. It makes us so much more likely to be at home in our own lives. It makes the world safer for all of us.