When the mind goes quiet, there is nothing to say. often there is still a voice. Though
every time I log on here and write something – I AM someone different.
I stumbled upon notebook after notebook of my recipes – cut, copied, scribbled down with cryptic-to-me-now notations – instructions and ingredients for cooking. I am no longer that person. In fact, i have become a disinterested and perhaps even a bad cook. I’ll say it, I AM a bad cook, now; how is that even possible?
the hunger is for the thing which cannot be made. cannot be tasted. that which we become. oh no. that which we are.
i don’t feel any way about any of it. good or bad, it’s okay, i am on the ride and not holding on. This stance to life means every definition and behavior WILL slip away. the “I am” ideas of me go, some quickly and some so gradually i never realized until they were gone. cook, mother, daughter, sister, helper, lover, bill payer, teacher, actor, young, middle, old, spry, slow…
this lack of self-definition makes interaction in most places surreal. when listening and watching without “I am” statements to think or say, i hear with new ears. At back to school orientation – I pay the fees, smile, listen to the conversations that dead-end quickly for lack of connection – so many people giving reports of summer activity which feel like listings of status – bragging hidden behind complaints – i see words as ribbons spinning in instead of out – i feel a pull of sadness for the masks and facades that people hardly hear themselves constructing. I see the loneliness behind the wall. and the ease in which they might suddenly let it all go.
what i see in stillness while still moving are the moments to help us all unwind the inward swirl through a laugh, through the eyes, a few words, a gift, acceptance. presence helps us help each other to just be – together – in these moments. I still myself to have this flow more and more —————>
In the night, when I realize that I have shifted from sleeping to some other state, where the mind is going through lists, dilemmas, scenarios, I am lost for a bit in the twirl of that and then just by listening as if I am someone else, what seemed urgent suddenly falls away into a dark room with the hint of first light coming.
Sometimes I hear myself saying an “I am” something, and I have to laugh. I want to immediately say, I am, yes, but I am also not. the use of words becomes a riddle – and i dance between the forrest and the town, a bit of a troll, a crone, a madwoman on the edge –
My small fractal self is a real thing. I am here in the flesh, learning how to walk the path of marga. and even if she is infinitely small in one sense, she is also infinitely large experiencing itself the only way it can through her – as she learns to say yes to her very own journey.
Ophanic Eyelash
more and more I find my choices are more in line with true self love rather than the version i had been employing for most of my life. moving in the direction of joy or what feels good is so antithetical to the mistaken idea of goodness that many of us carry around. corners of a square of dark chocolate with sea salt, a gentle nuzzling with the kitty who sits at our front door, grass and sand under my soft feet, watching a movie with chloe, napping when needed, tasting the irish breakfast tea in my cup, switching midstream from a plan to a more open flow. it isn’t very complicated.
i love my daughters as naturally and openly as anything i’ve experienced thus far – my dividing cells that helped create them still ache deep inside me while inside them. it aches in a spot I cannot touch to be a parent. Yet i can see how their own lack of self love causes their suffering. the tenderness i extend so naturally to them has been such a great teacher for the tenderness i so naturally can chose to extend to myself.
there are many places that i haven’t gone this summer so far that not long ago i would have made myself go. the shoulds again, I repeat myself. there are places we go for all sorts of reasons. religious ceremonies that we do not wish to attend. reunions, parties, visits to relatives. each time these invites or offers came up, i sensed my knee-jerk impulse of should. I should go. I should be there. I should allow my ex mother-in-law to stay at my house. Something made me stop and check in with myself. do i feel like it? i have a long history of pleasing – and finally – it is clear – i please myself.
i please myself.
this is good.
pleasing myself is good.
Slowing down to kindergarten language…why? Because at first, stepping away from pleasing others feels wrong to some of us. The things I have stepped away from in the past few years triggered my conditioning – my living a life in part, a big part, as an expression of the expectation of others.
I don’t mind saying this – this newbie admission – because it is so powerfully true – and can crop up over and over.
There are polar reactions to the statement I please myself. Either, right on sister – pleasing you is what is good for you and the world. Or a thought that I am on a path of pure selfishness. The thought that thinks I am selfish thinks selflessness is virtuous.
What is selflessness? Not doing what pleases me, reducing my joy. My state of loss makes me feel small and cut off from the flow of all life. Selflessness is me refusing to be here and live a life of my choosing where I am lost in a dream of my smallness. The state of confusion and loss is infectious – the virus of resistance!
What is the wrongly perceived selfishness? If I do what pleases me, I am in a state of joy. My state of joy is larger and more open to the flow of all life. I am here, as i chose to be, living a life of my choosing, and that is big beyond the self. That state of joy is infectious – the virus of YES!
saying no to the long drive and awkward gathering with others with whom I am out of sync felt delicious. Saying no to the house guest was generous. Generous to me! the outfall that came toward me from other people didn’t phase me a bit. the guilt trip language of others has become so transparent. without any guilt in me for doing my divinely given mission – pleasing myself – no guilt can stick. hallelujah.
there is a dreamed up schism in the human being – until there is not.
In the illusion it seems to me, there are an infinite number of doors behind which hidden aspects of personality wait, knocking all the while, years upon years, wanting their day in the sun of day to day life. One of mine escaped recently, actually, I’m sure I let her out willingly. She hasn’t seen the world in 25 years – you can imagine the unsettling feel of having her arrive at the party in my head. Can take a while to lead her down off of the table, back into her shoes, and sitting still for a good heart to heart.
healing.
no actually, first, awareness. Oh, hello there, you closeted self. I see you. I see your beauty and your pain. Won’t you come down and let me give you a long and deep look into your eyes? let me see your lovely reflection coming back at me. Let me love you whole and proper, the way you wanted all those years ago. Let me see your talents and gifts, let me hold you without judgement and allow you to be here – accepted, embraced. Even in writing these words, I feel her calming down, I feel her relaxing back into her skin. She came with a message that she was not allowed to deliver and then she was squashed down among all the cast offs. She needed a bit of release – so understandable.
No wonder we don’t like the quiet and wide open spaces. We come to haunt ourselves in these times. I give myself Courage to walk through the haunting with love – for all ghosts are just looking to the light of agape – knowing they do not have to settle for less. This ghost house opens all its doors and the wisps of selves and secrets swirl in the corners in spirals leading up – until the roof blows off and the vortex pulls all to the light – We are part of the ultimate recycling of energy and matter – nothing is ever wasted – refuse is a misnomer – compost is divine.
this is the Red Bastard. he was in charleston for a couple of nights.
seems like an obnoxious sort of fellow. some laughs.
what happened there blew me away
This clip does not reveal where the show goes, this is only his opening. It is hard to describe, but coming from a long history of buffon, based on the medieval traveling shows in which the lame, the grotesque, and disabled who had been shunned from their villages, came on wagons during the pagan holidays to perform. Those outside the norms of society could reflect back the absurdity within humanity. red bastard is the trickster – pushing buttons and boundaries of individuals in the audience, often without tact or care, yet showing us, in humor, we get to choose, in every moment who we are, closed or open, weak or strong. We actually got up as an audience and followed a woman to the bathroom. Crazy. He does what occurs to him to do in the moment based on what people do in response – An in-the-moment flow.
inside a black room, people can be pulled out of comfort, complacency, decency, respectability – the performer who asks this of his audience does not stand behind the shield of humor or sarcasm only; the nakedness and honesty he demands of his audience is returned in spades.
we were not allowed to stay in our seats. we were not allowed to not participate. we were not allowed to bullshit. we were not allowed to get angry for in the face of the whipper, our torturer was also charm, love, vulnerability, honesty. He demanded people interact with him with honesty.
Extreme nudity can be found ironically behind a mask and a costume 0 ooooooo which eventually strips away to bare naked – and what is beyond the naked – well, I won’t give away his secrets, but i never imagined one would reveal upon a stage in this way. comfort in the skin you are in, when does this come? how does this come? – for surely we are only a body, not only just this – but a created material thing here to occupy this atmosphere – bones sinew blood and skin – with lungs heart spleen parts pumping within- and gumby wired movable parts without, penis breasts elbows grins
we crave public stripping
we crave bullshit bombs going off in all our venues
we crave long languid silences with the roaming humans on the range
some words I scribbled the afternoon before i unexpectedly found myself at this clown show:
chloe and I are driving downtown under overcast skies.
melancholy has descended on my mood.
i long for something – and i want to be past longing. i desire. i ache. i know not how to be.
a drop of a melancholia inherited in a dreary rainy drip.
where is the balance between flowing as you feel and escape. where does copping out begin o…
Then the tickets and time are afforded to me and I find myself forcing myself out of the house at 9:45pm…sleepy; I go to the show by myself…
and I am transformed. Suddenly all the world is a stripping and standing naked alone job for all of us! every moment can be anything. I can meditate on my couch for 30 minutes, visit another planet, I can rise up to the ceiling and look down at all the clutter.
Why do dark grey moods settle in at all? When they do, why is it so hard to remember that they pass? I think I also want to say that melancholia is a delicious treat – it is – like a cloudy day full of dripping clouds or heavy down pours – this grey can be absorbed into the experiences just as beautifully as sun.
Why do we seek approval connection validation to be heard? what misery! i read Jane Eyre every so often, I don’t know why, but in part to remember how so many people in human bodies have experienced isolation hour by hour and weeks upon weeks looking out windows walking across moors putting up with making do surviving the only way they can eating boring food only speaking expected words dying young without experiences. I am wondering to myself if my brother died a virgin at 17. dear soul, what pleasure did he know by that age? matters not. he may be walking the clouds, he may be back in another body and fairly old by now. i know nothing – and feel nothing but a fuzzy memory like a movie I once saw – i wouldn’t know him in his own old body let alone another. not a story clung to…now I must go do chores and duties – perhaps without clothes on – because all are gone from this house until late – I am alone and I am the master of this house and my bones!
This sort of gaze is unusual in our world. This picture arrests me. Not because of who this is. Mooji is a good teacher for me, but it is his eyes that I am drawn to. I see a clear mirror in this picture; perhaps no more words are needed.
i seek this, hunger for this lack of pretense. This blog helps me to see my words reflecting layers of story clouding just how close this clarity is.
I, too, am getting sick of words.
i lack nothing. I have never lacked for anything.
But I do Ask, Why are the pictures above and below unusual?
Patti Smith and William S. Burroughs
There is a certain nakedness here that arrests me, in this shot, as well.
Why do we not all see each other for real, young or old, pretty or plain; why do we not look each other in the eyes and see ourselves and grab hold like it means something?
Excuses, excuses: the mantle is tall; I am a bit small as humans go, and i am not able to capture the true beauty I see in these paintings with my camera.
Do you love them? Hope and Fire? – unbounded gifts from Benjamin Prewitt, my friend. I hardly imagined they would actually arrive, and when they did, i went a bit out of body. All seemed like a game. I played along and here we are. An earlier version of myself would have said…thank you so very much for the offer, but I couldn’t possibly accept. Am I flowering in the moment of now with blessings on my head – saying YES, AND… to whatever crosses my trail?
Benjamin’s paintings stir the nameless within, his words touch the heart, and the accounting of his walk with PD stiffens my resolve daily . The colors, composition and textures alone would be enough, Dayenu, but the archetypal themes, abstractions, divine feminine and humor – all roll into a happening.
Is there time to express ourselves in these little life spans? What are the gifts we are given? How do we flow with the gifts, allowing them to develop and express, and still survive? I know a million people who have swallowed whole the person they wish they could be. I have walked (and perhaps still do, at times) hiding my light under layers of shame. I’m embarrassed at times to even be a human being – when I forget who I really am.
Finally I got to a place, I could not go on – living to die – walking slowly not as me at all toward the next thing to dread, dislike, get through. I’ve been there. I remember the way that felt. Sometimes from a single thought which I might grab hold of as it flies by, I will be sucked down into the dank…who are you to do anything? – there are always better than you – why bother?
In this process of forgetting and remembering, somehow the eyes get ignited with an accelerant, the shine comes out from within, and the soul laughs and says I don’t give a damn what car you rented for this journey – lets go out for a joy ride and spread our candied smiles and whoops of joy out the windows as we go by – let’s get out that pen, that pad, that paint, that flute, let’s dance down the aisles of familiar chores, let’s sing to the bank teller, let us drop our dirty shame blanket and shimmy!
People have gifts and the sharing of these gifts seems knife on bone close to the whole point of what we are doing here. I cry at recitals, I am touched by effort – I am blown away to be here – receiving – alive with the wish to create and return.
Tangible joy makes me wanna pick up a Ukulele!
A thank you wholly inadaquate to Benjamin Prewitt – awakening me again this week in ever growing ways to the joy of being alive.
As much as the mind continually wishes to do this.
A pulsing of life in a body moves from experience to experience. Even if it choses to stay in bed with the covers to its neck, the experiences come – through the light in the window – through the thunder outside, the mosquito in the ear, the pounding at the door –
All of the moments can be stitched together in such away to make a story – an attractive one – a funny one- a pitiful one – all still story. The story adds layers upon layers which the deepest part of you knows is false.
dancing in this world of ours of falseness – of suffering projected out into judgement of others’ worthiness – no one takes me seriously! really? why should they? What has that to do with a thing? Wanting others to view us in any sort of a way is all the act of resume building. This conglomeration of bones tissue blood memories preferences achy fingers bruised shins sagging breasts twinkling eyes – is nothing. In this realization of nothing lies great freedom. There is no charge – no combustion – there is no thing here to get a rise out of. My back may rise, yet know the hissing is just a fun game of pretend. Look at my claws, meow.
I have taken the daily beating of the worst sort of sadistic suffering guards – and I learned to shower them with love. If you expose your pain to me – even if you think you are wounding – I kiss it. I know it. I give because I need no reason – I am an empty vessel tapping into the thing greater than me – empty out the identity and you can know the universe and secrets within – and have no wish of personal gain from that. Others think they kick me while I could tell them wonders that I see in their buried parts – I can read the iris of their eyes and the lines on their palms, but they know not. I kiss the bleeding wound, dank with infection and sully my lips none.
You can take and are a taker – this trait is obvious for all to see – has been all along – and in your peek upon my breast, you reveal your own. In your wrath and prickliness, you reveal your soft underbelly – and desire to transcend your animal nature by diving deep within it – go on in head first, I shout.
I am coming to see the irony of the artist’s journey – the desire to be something to do something ties you to the flesh and to your experiences and to your pain. Trust the alchemy of this – and know all are accepted in the lap, all are allowed to suckle – there is no shame – there is not wrong but an infinity of choice – to engage or to provoke or to accelerate or to stagnate for a bit – matters not – free choice –
All water flows to the amassed mysterious sea – or evaporates into the hot air, to be rained into the sea, again and again. the games of who is good or who is talented or who has read enough to be deemed intelligent or who can name that line, “east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet,” in 30 seconds at the drunken literary dinner party – only to realize all is lost in the haze of chest beating and booze, let us fuck on this couch while my wife sleeps in the next room – she is hard of hearing – bravado. if inspiration is borrowed, that is taking too, without permission. And one says it sucks, one says it speaks, matters not, but that it was a choice of how to pass the time. we are all floating in the same mind space oblivious and sharp edged – for now. some awaken and merge and care not where one begins or another ends, who creates or who absorbs, or who is top or bottom; the merging is deeper than the mind can fathom.
* I feel the need for a disclaimer – All poking is at me or versions of me – boring, safe, predictable. I allow myself to push publish as I flow into different spaces. I find the format of a blog, which allows for free expression, also becomes a confine of identity at times.
Pushing into the paradox of identity, into the two sides of the coin of personality where:
flexibility=strength or flexibility=passivity=weakness
alone=lonely or alone=freedom
retreating into the shell of the comfort zone or being still and knowing I am
pushing the ego identity out into the world for approval and validation or doing in the world in unison with the natural flow
These are some yin or yang that keep reappearing for me.
Of course all definitions fall away – this is known.
“The moment you can say to existence I am perfect as I am, happy as I am, in the east this is called shraddah, trust.”
“When you have accepted yourself you have accepted existence. Compassion arises when you are perfectly grounded in your being – you say, Yes this is the way I am. You have no ideals to fulfill.”
It is the mind that divides these things into math equations.
Stepping into my own –
Look at what options can appear – In a 2D world – 3D is mind-blowing.
Polarity in the 3D is something else entirely from a 4D View.
There comes a moment for me when I am so tired of the identity that I MUST plop myself down and sit under tree as long as I must.
Am I sitting under the tree or Am I hanging on through the curves and riding the sharp drops with my hands up?
Every moment is presented to me in the passenger seat; I’m strapped in – in agreement and acceptance. The master playwright is watching from within with a grin – leading me to the edge of breaking out.
Every moment is THE one.
Take the attitude that you will discover the Truth today! If you say, you are going to take a year off work to search for the Truth, it will take at least a year. For, like this the mind has just been given a one-year visa to continue indulging in its antics. Truth is not a gift to be handed out at the end of one year’s seeking. It is here now. Say, “Yes, I am fully here, in the heart, for this”. Be willing ‘to get it’ today. ‘To get it’ means to blow away the mist of falsehood, of ego identity and vain projections through the light of perfect understanding.
With such an attitude, nothing will deter you from your goal.
~ Mooji
Zmar, Portugal, 10th of May 2013
How many times and in how many ways does one need to hear –
Life as Improv 