Archive | April, 2013

mind habits

30 Apr

Mind won a round last night.  Instead of going and doing something, I chose the easy path of staying home in my comfort zone.

Breaking the long time, heavily-grooved patterns can SEEM really, bloody hard.

I think this is my task right now.  I can focus on the instances where I am successful, but in reality, I recognize some patterns that seem so close to the core as to actually BE me.  These patterns are not the definition of a person, they are just familiar.  They are habits of how one tends to inhabit the world.  In-HABIT – what an encoded word!

Actually many of my habits give me such nice interactions:  the cloak of accommodation, the hat of approachability, the gloves of kindness, the air of acquiescence – these patterns have gotten me far in the face to face dance with others.  But now the ground is shaky – All is in flux when you start messing with the early programming.   I don’t know how to be anymore.  This  is good.

Besides the habit of nice, open, accommodation, I also retreat.  I love to be alone.  I love the familiar.  When trying to socialize, I feel such strong resistance.  I am lifting a 10 ton car out of the road, I am bending solid steel spoons, I am groaning with the strain.  In one mind state such EFFORT, then all of this can fall away and the 10 ton car becomes an imaginary feather.

I can psychoanalyze why but that doesn’t stop the fact that in times of mind stress, habits return; they drop down like a trap door around the spaciousness, as quickly as a rigged mouse trap pops over the head of the rodent – POW,  my pattern and  I’m back to my shoe box house.

Writing this down makes my habits here seem so SILLY.

Social-Butterfly-small

Social gatherings, oye,  my Achilles heel.   I will get out of socializing faster than you can say boo.  But here is an interesting thing – when I go out of my comfort zone, I am richly rewarded.  Every path walking friend has come about because I stepped outside of the marga identity and did something different.  Living this life for me, is recognizing the paradox in learning when to go with the flow and when to step out of the stream and do something that feels uncomfortable.  Taoism is not describing a passive  practice.  The Vedas are not describing a way to walk from birth to death as a ghost.  Meditation and walking with awareness are not about staying the same.

So last night there was an improv gathering at the Riverdogs baseball game.  The mind won.

I had arranged a ride for Eden to get to her play rehearsal.  I had finished my work.  I made the night clear and knew the value of getting to know everyone better so I could be more comfortable on stage and open to the moment with people who were not “strangers!”  Granted it was pouring rain…

These improvisors who were gathering are the nicest and most open people I can imagine, which makes it all the more SILLY!  My mind habit of social anxiety kept seeing images of myself having to walk in alone, sitting by the most standoffish person, playing a scenario where i actually make things worse by showing up. Instead of seeing myself making friends, I see myself alienating others.  This is the power of the mind.

I had the most magnificent walk in the rain around my neighborhood alone,  I  got some extra work done ,  I got a good night’s sleep, and I am in good shape to face this new day.  I had a good night alone, but that is not the point here.  The quiet voice of awareness feels like a gentle prodding for me to be new and fresh, without the burden of habits and patterns.

Every moment always gives me the opportunity to make a new choice.  Here’s to new choices for me and for you with whatever your mind habits happen to be!

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an improvised life

30 Apr

one of my improv classmates, Michael Lacey, won a speech contest at the Citadel here in Charleston.  This is his winning speech – An Improvised Life…

http://mediasite.nation.citadel.edu/Mediasite/Play/642fcf27e8664ee9870849323bae9eb01d

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Flights of Fancy, finding perspective…

28 Apr

Feels natural to share such rich word nuggets as these. I was unfamiliar with the author of these assorted quotes from her recent post – and found just a tidbit here: C. Joybell: : A true bell of Joy ! Thanks Maddy!

1EarthUnited

“I’m not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.”

“We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matter. Too much of the time, we are blinded by our own pursuits of people to love us, people that don’t even matter, while all that time we waste and the people who do love us have to stand on the sidewalk and watch us beg in the streets! It’s time to put an end to this. It’s time for us to let ourselves be loved.”

“You will manage to keep a woman in love with you…

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I don’t mind

26 Apr

Dream_Chaser_by_cypherx

It might seem like maybe if you lose some weight, maybe if you get more money, maybe if you find a person who really understands you, maybe if you finally figure out how to have lots of friends, maybe if you get recognized for being famous, maybe if your face were a bit prettier, maybe if you could be a great athlete, maybe you could finally find yourself at the cool table in the middle school lunchroom, maybe if you were taller, maybe when the kids leave home, maybe when you can see things in the world, maybe if you could learn enough, maybe if you were a bit smarter, maybe if you weren’t so tongue tied, maybe if your family cared about you more, maybe if you could look perfect to others, maybe if you got promoted, maybe if your job involved cool travel, maybe if you could do what you thought was helping others as your job, maybe if you could support yourself as an artist, maybe if your house didn’t have clutter, maybe if a good day never ended, maybe if your kids were better behaved, maybe if you didn’t have to worry, maybe if you were important, maybe if you could be alone, maybe if you finally found yourself, maybe if your mind got quiet and you were enlightened, maybe if other people listened to your words, maybe if you didn’t feel invisible, maybe if you finally felt good enough, maybe if you figured it all out…

When one accepts what comes with equanimity, one is more open and present to deal with the moment with whatever is needed because the mind is not clouded by trying to cling to the good or run from the bad of what is occurring.  What happens, I don’t mind.    There is nothing wrong with me or you or this moment.

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the art of leaving the nests

24 Apr

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.  Pema Chodron

When holding on to the sticks of my little nest and refusing to fly on, the weather can get so stormy as to blow me out of my home.

I am being pushed out of the nest of passivity into participation.  My debut at improv is tonight.

My oldest daughter is going through the beginning of her college application process and show signs of finding her niches, more and more.

My youngest is entering high school this fall and already feels the shift of that, if she doesn’t get recruited into Cirque du Soleil, first. 🙂

My school is transitioning to a whole new format, combining shorter classes and online components, while reliable, English department strongholds – gone overnight; nothing is guaranteed – is it ever?

My girls want to move into a home that feels more like a home than this condo.  Despite the overwhelming task of taking all we own and carrying it out and down and across and through…

My “yes, and…” is to say why not? to all of it.

We are throwing ourselves out of these nests, eyeing others…which starts in the imagination, in openness, in flowing, and finally sweat!  Let us see how this goes.

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do the opposite

20 Apr

maskwoman

Basically this –  I’m afraid.

My acceptance into the improv company and the reality of actually performing in front of a live audience as a regular gig has me quite afraid.  Who is afraid?  Who watches the fear?

The body increases the heart rate in response to thoughts; the air flow constricts, the body pulls into itself, almost wanting to opossum itself under her chair.

What a  gift – to be feeling fear – and to get to experience the body and mind in this fear and to recognize the infinite array of choice here.

I’ve had a tendency (I guess that is what we do as human animals-have tendencies toward certain behaviors) to retreat.  I can get into my passive mode fairly easily, allowing myself to be taken by the currents, flowing with the go :), but not initiating the go, so much.

Where does the teaching come from that suggests one do the opposite of the habit or tendency as a practice toward the middle path?    One guru would be George Costanza from the Sienfeld show 😛

What compels us to do anything on this planet in our human bodies?  Dancers dance, singers sing:  why do I have hangups about just doing what it is I seem to be able to do?

The opposite for me here is that instead of retreating, I am walking straight into the fire of my fear.  My self doubt is tedious to me.  When I went to see a show this week, my little self was screaming inside, “You can’t do that.  Why did they want you in this company?  These people are all so funny and clever and spontaneous!”  And then those thoughts got old.  And I realized that I can say the opposite to myself,  of course.   I can stay open to the moment of whatever all of this brings.

What is difficult is that while you learn a new way of doing something, you make a lot of mistakes.  I say improv is a failure-based art form because inexperienced players fail almost every time they try to do a scene.[…]  Improvisors need to recondition themselves to see failure not as a negative.  Greg Tavares, Improv for Everyone  (Greg is one of my teachers)

Do I really care about success here?  NO, not really.  I just like to play.  And having an audience watch me play with others who like to stay in the moment in a massive game of silly pretend is of no matter.  I can do this.  Improv is a failure driven art form.  Life is a failure driven art form.  To live your life – the life of your own – you ultimately give up expectations and definitions of success and failure and just do what you are going to do.  The praise or rejection comes to no consequence.

In the world of improv,  My name is George, I’m unemployed and I live with my parents can even become a most powerful and attracting introduction.

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pressing dream

17 Apr

there is something I’ve forgotten that is gnawing at the edges, licking behind my ear lobe, pressing the top of my skull as I sleep. I’ve had this before, the edges of dreams that press up against my waking with an urgency – a map – a need that once awake, fades into nothing but an ache  that cannot be named but wants to be soothed – there is something I am being told to remember.

this happened before years ago, a feeling of knowing in the night, of task, of connection, certainty that fades yet still shoves up against me for days.  I often wonder if I am being prepared for the shipwrecks coming into my life – my dreams are a locker room talk with spirit, complete with a game time strategy drawn on a dry erase board by my higher self.

dreamFor some reason, my conscious brain is kept out of loop so often.  In my experience in another realm after hovering between life and death with the birth of my daughter, I remember being held – full body held in the arms of someone immense who whispered in my ear the love and support that was with me.  And I was told then of the game plan too, but the details never came back.  I live in the moment with a constant case of deja vu.

The being came again and again for years giving me refreshers, downloads, and reboots, all of it fading upon light.  The matches are stowed safely away from this baby.

It doesn’t even matter; the knowledge of the reality beyond this little life is first hand.  The love and support and peek behind the veil is first hand.  Perhaps Rabbit holes and traps exist for the identity with too much information.  Or may be that fulfilling my path takes a certain blindness to make it the real journey and not a cake walk 😉

 

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just eat the cake

17 Apr

Byron Katie:  A Thousand Names for Joy

from chapter 26:

Who would you be in people’s presence without, for example, the story that anyone should care about you, ever?  You would be love itself.  When you believe the myth that people should care, you’re too needy to care about people or about yourself.  The experience of love can’t come from anyone else; it can come only from inside you.

I was once walking in the desert with a man who began to have a stroke.  We sat down, and he said, “Oh my God, I’m dying.  DO something!”  He was talking through one side of his mouth because the other side had become paralyzed.  What I did was just sit there beside him, loving him, looking into his eyes, knowing that we were miles from a phone or car.  He said, “You don’t even care, do you?”  I said, “No.”  And through his tears, he started to laugh, and I did, too.  And eventually his faculties returned; the stroke had come to pass, not to stay.  This is the power of love.  I wouldn’t leave him for a caring.[…]

If you move into situations of loss in a spirit of surrender to what is, all you experience is a profound sweetness and an excitement about what can come out of the apparent loss.  And once you question the mind, once the stressful story is seen for what it is, there’s nothing you can do to make it hurt.  You see the worst loss you’ve experienced is the greatest gift you can have.  When the story arises again – “She shouldn’t have died” or “He shouldn’t have left” – it’s experienced with a little humor, a little joy.  Life is joy, and if you understand the illusion arising, you understand that it’s you arising, as joy.

What does compassion look like?  At a funeral, just eat the cake!  You don’t have to know what to do.  It’s revealed to you. 

(the absurdity of the play of this life seems conveyed in this visual/time/music juxtaposition – expletive warning)

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no traps or snares

13 Apr

Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Stephen Mitchell:

“…But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes 

EdgarA.Poe

nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident 
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and 
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in 
Poe’s stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode. 

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about
us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
We are set down in life as in the element to which we best 
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of 
years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we 
hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to be

distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason todragon_and_the_princess_by_cynnalia-d394vxw
mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, 
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us; 
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we 
arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now 
still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust
and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into 
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps 
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless 
that wants help from us.”

There is room for all range of peace and suffering.

But Unhappy is more interesting to the mind.

What did Tolstoy see:  Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.    How many expressions of Joy can the suffering mind endure when it wants to cling to its suffering?

I spent many years wearing a groove in familiar areas of comfort, but still could not reduce the suffering.  I remember well that strip of floor by the window of my being.  It is still here with me, still contained in me, just now it can be dwarfed now by the immensity.  The dragons  from the past few years seem to have been revealed and now the princesses are all dressed up for the ball.  My being fills first my body, then the room, then the whole building.  Before you know it, I’m ocean sized and more.Try it; close your eyes and expand yourself out to your real size.

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just say yes

11 Apr

There is nothing special about flowing with the universe.

Sometimes I think flow is reserved for stolen moments in nature, but flow is everywhere at every time for everyone/thing.

When Chloe stood over my bed, where I was grading essays last night with her hands on hips saying she needed a copy of William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice by yesterday and what did I plan to do about it (grin), my mind went into motion trying to squeeze all in.

This morning, a book and a store credit manifest, and still I arrived at work 10 minutes early as this song came on a radio:

STOP!

Some part of my identity and story wants to stop right here and make clear, this is not MY music.  Music makes you lame or cool – masks come up, postures are struck, and naked  here means sharing a song outside my cool, created self.  This song is boppy, perhaps a bit sappy.  My 14 year old jumps around with her girlfriends to this song.  I think that they imagine boys proposing to them  from the conditioned stories of their potential futures.

Beyond the easy interpretation perhaps these words keep me still:  There’s nothing holding you back. It’s not a test –  nor a trick of the mind – Only Love!  So simple, and you know it is… It’s all I want.

I switched to battery and sat with the atmosphere of this song.    A moment to celebrate my aloneness AND my connection to everything.   I am alone in a romantic way, yet  I am a part of all romance.  This sounds like bullshit, but I don’t think it is.

Also I know 😛 that on the side of my palm where the relationship lines lie, a groove has been growing.  I am learning myself.  I am enjoying the space to do so.  I can feel the shape of my other out there, no hurry, no need – just flow.

In front of the car appears the most vibrant male cardinal making his way, through sun and shadow on the grass.  Listening, watching, paused.  He and I become aware of his mate about 10 feet behind at the same moment and  he runs/hops over to her.  They meet face to face and seem to click their beaks together.  Such a moment of connection – but I know that I am not gifted this scene – I am as much a part of this scene as my supposed chores and errands.

When the song is over, the birds are on to their next patch of seeds, worms.  What do they eat?  and what do you know?  There is still a pocket of time to pick up some copies before class.

The flow – we all are here in it together, no separation.  We bless strangers who sneeze in public places; we hold elevator doors; the songs, the birds, the cars all flow from the same source.

So nice when I remember.

(I did not insert a picture of Cardinals;)

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