I’ve slacked off quite a bit lately on my entries, but I’m working through the book Calling in the One at an accelerated rate, and it involves a lot of journaling. I’ve already made it through Week Five. It amazes me how many of the early chapters mirror some of the themes I’ve recently explored here: that your beloved may show up looking differently than you expected, that emotional injuries sustained within your family of origin really do create a template for later relationships (or lack of them), that embracing your own ambivalence is half the battle. It’s nice to know I’ve already done a fair chunk of the work.
*
One chapter actually opened up some of that old familiar pain in my chest, but it was a lot duller and more bearable this time. In “Honoring Our Need for Others,” Katherine Woodward Thomas writes
We’ve become so afraid of appearing too needy that many of us have given up a healthy sense of entitlement…we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater. It’s appropriate for us to go into a relationship with the intention of caring for the needs of another, with the anticipation that our needs for love, connection, and belonging will be cared for in return. It’s part of what it is to be human.
Back when I was in therapy, and my therapist would occasionally bring up the prospect of real mutuality with some unknown future person, I would feel a vague discomfort and resistance, which we never explored. I assured her that it was more important to me to love than be loved. I could take care of myself. Far be it from me to make demands.
…in our efforts not to appear inappropriately needy, many of us have tried to shut down our needs entirely. The appropriate needs get thrown together with the inappropriate ones and we swallow them all. Yet this, in turn, only creates more hunger because it’s simply not normal for us not to have needs in our relationships with others.
No one likes a clingy type, I thought. (Never mind that I was practically a stalker when it came to a guy named Greg Schulz.) I didn’t sense that any of the men I deemed worth having were interested in giving anything back to me.
Often, when my clients complain that they are too needy, I discover that the people whom they are spending time with are unwilling or unable to provide support, consistency, and love to them. I assure them that it may not necessarily be that they are too needy. Rather, they may be choosing people who, for whatever reason, aren’t taking their needs into consideration. Of course, this then leads us to explore how willing they are to take their own needs seriously.
Ever since leaving home, where belonging came with a stiff price, I had championed rugged self-sufficiency, ignoring how lonely and abandoned I felt underneath. While I was studying philosophy in college, the Stoics had appealed to me; theirs was a worldview conceived by slaves who (for good reason) had despaired of any semblance of control over their circumstances and any expectation of having even their basic needs met. It therefore sprung from an extreme of helplessness, a helplessness much like that of the dogs in Seligman’s experiment who ceased trying to escape their cage. Some followers of Buddhism and certain New-Age spiritualities are not entirely dissimilar when they denounce attachment and try to get rid of suffering by eschewing desires and needs altogether and throwing out the bathwater with the baby still in it.
What gets forgotten here is that we are not slaves. We are not dogs in a cage. There’s a significant difference between being attached to the anticipation of a sunny day off or spaghetti for dinner, and being attached to the need to feel visible. In other words, don’t sweat the small stuff…but it isn’t all small stuff. And not all expectations are unreasonable.
*
Going back through my files, I pulled out an old letter from Dave, who had lived with (my object of worship) Max and (my object of lust) Jacob my last year of college. Dave was like a younger brother to me, and I loved him ardently (probably more than just as a younger brother, but he had one girlfriend all four years). I had felt moved to write a poem about their little three-man household, pouring my heart into the characterization of each one of them, and calling it “Brothers.” I gave a copy to Max when it was finished. A few months after graduation I got a letter from Dave, expressing his appreciation and wonderment at how I had nailed it, and thanking me for creating a lasting portrait of their “family.” He closed by saying
Having no song to offer in return, I would at least like to say this: it is a pity that we are only imperfectly able to return give you back the love you hold for us that allowed you to write this poem. I have often felt this for mys anyway, and I very much wish that someone will find you who can give you back the love you so freely distribute to the world, measure for measure.
With love, Dave
When I first read this, I burst into hiccuping, breathless sobs like a smacked toddler and cried for at least two hours straight. Dave’s kind words seemed to me like kisses in a world of blows. I let loose torrents of suppressed pain.
Now I cried again, but with a lot less pain. This time it didn’t have to be Max or Jacob (or even Dave) — or nothing. Yes indeed, my dear Dave, it’s high time for that someone to find me.
*
Ms. Thomas uses the word “pattern” in her book a lot. For a couple of years, the word “pattern” used in a psychological context aroused an overwhelming and irrational rage in me. I asked Doc specifically not to use it. I hated the word; hated its damning connotations.
What I finally figured out, however, thanks to Lisa Brown’s input, was that this rage had to do with blame and helplessness. The root of my wound, as she helped me understand, had to do with blaming myself for being rejected by my family and peers, while being unable to do anything about it; so the blame implicit in the idea of having entrenched and undesirable psychological “patterns” I should (supposedly) be able to change was only aggravating already overwhelming feelings of helplessness. Put simply, you could say I was reacting violently to feeling blamed for the profound feelings of blameworthiness that have caused me no end of trouble for forever. Coping with and defending against those feelings are what helped set those goddamned “patterns” in motion!
I’ve come to certain conclusions, backed up by Ms. Brown and Ms. Thomas, about what we are and are not responsible for. Yes, it may be conceptually interesting when talking abstractly from a “spiritual” perspective of nonduality (i.e. nothing is ultimately either good or bad) to entertain the notion that a soul chooses its circumstances — that we choose everything that happens to us from birth. This is a popular metaphysical view right now among the yoga set, and one Doc advocated. But this would also mean that (to borrow an example from the book) four-year-old Elizabeth, who gets molested by her father, is somehow ultimately responsible for it. From a psychologist’s perspective, this is just sick. The child already lives in shame and feels responsible; the woman spends her life feeling dirty and unworthy. This variety of New Age fancy may feel superficially empowering for about ten minutes, but it heals nothing. Thomas tells the rest of the story:
I invited Elizabeth, as she is now, an adult woman of forty-one, to imagine that she was looking at herself as a four-year-old girl. I asked her to picture a grown man, her father — a man who, we would hope, would protect and love her — instead trying to have sex with her. “What do you think of this little girl?” I asked. “Would you look at her and say to yourself, ‘What a dirty, dirty little girl. No wonder that man is sexually abusing her.’?”
Elizabeth burst into tears as, for the first time, she actually understood her blamelessness.
What the shame-filled, self-blaming child needs is what Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting needed: that breakthrough moment when his therapist held him tight and said “It’s not your fault” over and over again. I waited years for someone to say that to me.
*
My total break with Doc, still open-ended and without closure, has been troubling me, but I can’t bring myself to call or write him. I expect that I won’t be able to make him understand what happened from my perspective. He has his own interpretation of everything, that some “self” of mine was unjustly making him the bad guy the way some “self” in Sam was making me the bad guy. (Jesus, I hate Voice Dialogue anymore, almost as much as I hate fundamentalism!) I needed Lisa’s paradigm in order to accurately describe what happened. Lisa’s model of the human psyche has critical elements that were missing or underplayed in Doc’s model.
My rage and complete break with Doc really wasn’t all that unlike Sam’s rage and complete break with me and his life here…but not for the reasons Doc gave. I feel it’s safe to say now, thanks to Lisa, that Sam and I both have highly permeable boundaries. We both find it hard to say no, and can be easily manipulated or overcome by more forceful personalities. He probably feels as angry and helpless about the way he rolls over for other people as I do. For people like us, it’s easier to keep people out in the first place than to kick them out once they’ve taken up residence inside our “circle.” When they do get in, sometimes the only remedy seems to be total withdrawal. I had huge problems drawing lines with my family, so now I live 2000 miles away. And the only solution to the inappropriate shaming I was receiving at the studio from my dominating boss seemed to be to cut and run.
Sam badly needed to regain the integrity of his boundaries, and the only way he could do that, he must have concluded, was by cutting everybody off. My own “circle” was pretty compromised by my overdependence on Doc and by the way I often let him dominate with his more forceful personality and views. I knew I was deeply indebted to him for seeing me pro bono, and for giving me CDs and other items, so there was always that baseline imbalance, that feeling that I owed him. On some level, I suppose I was just tired and resentful of accepting his interpretations of my reality, and his last glib comment about Sam’s departure was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After one angry outburst, I stopped calling him, emailing him, or contacting him at all…much the same way Sam did with me.
I’m actually angrier with Doc for the ways he “got in my circle” than I am with Sam for taking such drastic measures to restore his own. But I also know I have to work on strengthening that boundary, and not just suppress the anger that naturally arises when it’s breached. Harriet Goldhor Lerner’s book The Dance of Anger is currently on the table beside Calling in The One. Can’t expect to get better at relationships without getting better at this.
*
Some people do make it easier for you. I take it as an excellent sign that I’ve managed to attract at least one (more) guy who breaks the old…dare I say it…pattern of finding myself with someone with whom it’s a struggle to hold my own.
Recently I was taken out to dinner at my favorite vegetarian restaurant by David, the decidedly nerdy noise musician I reconnected with on Facebook, who, as it turns out, was raised by a military family of Bible-thumping Republicans. At one point during the meal I asked out of curiosity, “So, what do you believe now? Do you subscribe to any particular philosophy or belief system?”
Now a great many of the men I have spent time with for much of my life would have eagerly taken this opening to to hold forth (perhaps with a whiff of condescension) upon the vast stores of their superior knowledge and wisdom as their food grew cold on the plate. I, in turn, would suddenly feel compelled to have a position, and to back it up with a somewhat anxious display of intellect. We might then play dueling egos, and I would probably lose. This could easily have been a first-date Pandora’s box, exposing vast and irreconcilable differences (which I’ve been known to ignore for a pretty face) — something I have grown almost to expect.
A look resembling panic briefly crossed David’s friendly face before he confessed with a shrug, “You know…I like to think that I’m still learning.” The last three words were spoken slowly and emphatically. “I read a lot…I’ve read a lot of philosophy…but I guess I feel like I don’t have it all figured out yet.”
I beamed at him. “Good answer!”
He smiled happily, as if I’d given him a prize. But really, he’d given me one. I was both delighted and floored. Even in the absence of any detectable sexual chemistry, even though he comes across as the oddest of oddballs, I thought: I want you in my life, David LeGrand! Here was a guy with a quality entirely lacking in my overbearing dad and nearly all the men I’d pursued in my life: humility. I could have practically wept with relief. At once I knew I wasn’t going to have to be on the defensive with him, or pretend I had it all figured out myself. David might not turn out to be the love of my life, but I knew at the very least he was someone I wanted to have on my team.
David saw me home, and hugged me goodnight. I giggled when he engulfed me with his six-foot-four frame. I felt small and almost childlike. But he gives a good hug.
*
Another acquaintance from work asked me out immediately after the acrimonious end of his long-term relationship, but I told him I didn’t want to catch anyone on the hard rebound. I’m sure I might have made exceptions (e.g. for Sonny) in the past, but I don’t want to do that now. I don’t want a “transitional relationship” — especially not with someone who lost his shit for a minute after I turned him down. It wasn’t an easy minute, but I felt stronger for guarding my boundaries and vindicated in being cautious.
*
If you recall, last spring at this time I was totally saturating myself with Damien Rice music. Since watching Moon, my celebrity fixation du jour has been the actor Sam Rockwell. I’ve watched every movie of his I could get my hands on, including the obscure indie comedy caper Welcome to Collinwood — a film I heartily recommend. (The more famous Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I watched with another guy you may recall named Sam.) Roger Ebert compared Rockwell to Christopher Walken, christening him the new “go-to guy for weirdness,” but he’s not heebie-jeebies creepy like Walken. When Rockwell plays characters on the slightly skeezy side (Welcome to Collinwood, Heist, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Choke, Matchstick Men), he oozes more sex than menace; you kind of want him to get you dirty. I felt like a pervert years ago when I found his sociopathic rapist/murderer in The Green Mile strangely magnetic, but he stole every scene he was in. Rockwell is capable of being funny and tragic and irresistible and repellent and vulnerable and diffident all at the same time. Just watch him as Chuck Barris, or as Victor Mancini in Choke. He lent complexity to the otherwise simple-minded bandit whose brother accomplishes The Assassination of Jesse James. Conflictedness is his forte. I could watch Rockwell all day. I very nearly have been.
I also pinpointed deeper reasons for my sudden obsession. Not too long ago I read a “fluff” article online about how women tend to choose men who look like their fathers. This happens to be a huge turn-off in my case, but I don’t recall ever being in love with my emotionally blank, odd-looking father the way little girls often are. I was, however, greatly besotted with my charismatic, handsome, much more demonstrative older brother John. In his case, it’s been true: the guys who attract me most powerfully resemble how I remember John at his most beautiful (in his adolescence and early twenties). Rockwell, my contemporary at 41, is no exception. It’s something about his hairline, the shape of his head, those knitted Tommy Lee Jones eyebrows, his deep-set brown eyes, and his prominent nose, not to mention his slim, athletic physique. That signature mole by his mouth makes me ache for every bit of loveliness I can’t quite reach. Even his behind-the-scenes clowning around is not unlike something my hammy big brother would do. Jonah and Sonny both remind me a little of John; the actor who played Nate Fisher reminds me a little of John; the guys who tend to catch my eye at the coffeehouse remind me a little of John. What can I say? He was the ultimate unavailable male: hotter, more successful, and cooler than me, the “winner” in our little brood, and completely out of the question. I started crying at his wedding reception and couldn’t stop until I got on the plane the next day. Jesus may have been my first unrequited love, but John was the second.
A couple of the tacit “agreements” Ms. Thomas’ book helped me identify that I’d been unconsciously keeping with him were: one, that I would never impinge on his spotlight — he would always be the “star” in our family; and two, that I would never love another man more than I loved him. We can all see how these unspoken vows would be self-defeating, but I never spoke them. I’ve just lived by them since we were kids. Prompted by the book, I wrote a fake letter to John releasing myself from this unfair contract. Sometimes a symbolic act is necessary.
Thomas also points out in her chapter on body acceptance (as I may have noted elsewhere) that pursuing men who are like my brother — men who are all the fabulous things I want to be and feel I’m not — is one way of trying to compensate for my own perceived inadequacies. Of course I never quite made it into their “league,” where I would at last (or so I unconsciously believed) be validated as good/successful/hot enough. Yet I don’t have the career of a critically acclaimed writer, or the slender, “perfect” body of a model or actress. Desire gets confounded with identification. I don’t just lust for Rockwell’s offbeat beauty or his juicy behind (which he bares often, thank you Mr. Rockwell!), I lust for his craft and his commitment. He goes out there and does his art, and excels in a wholly unique way; he’s the real deal. He makes weak projects stronger and good projects better. He reminds me that I’m not following my own bliss. I’m his contemporary, and I’ve done diddly-squat.
Some part of me is clamoring for me to do diddly instead of squat.
*
In other news, Padraic has been coming over to my place lately to put a laser device on my chronically injured shoulder. His sister bought it for him — a $3000 piece of European healing technology that supposedly helps cells heal themselves. So far, the results have been nebulous, but it’s given us an excuse to hang out. Being with Padraic, I have got to say, feels like being in an early Woody Allen movie. He has the fast-talking nebbishy monologues down pat, which can be funny…at times. He has a rather unfortunate love of puns. Sometimes it’s hard to get a word in edgewise. Based on what he’s said about past girlfriends, I’m picking up on some ambivalence from him about relationships in general.
That said, he’s been kind to come over and treat me for free. The other day we were talking — I was lying face down with the device on my shoulder, and he was sitting nearby in a chair — when I looked at him, and noticed the way he knitted his eyebrows. I noticed his deep-set brown eyes. Uh oh. I had a sudden heated impulse to launch myself at him and kiss him greedily, and probably much more than that…but I simply let the hormonal rush pass through me. When he hugged me goodbye, I told him that I liked him (was it the hormones talking?) and that maybe we should spend some time together socially…if he was up for it.
“What, are you kidding me?” he said, gesturing at me up and down. “I mean, look at you.”
I giggled, told him he was sweet, and bade him goodbye. It’s probably a bad idea to rush into anything based on a momentary impulse with someone you’re not sure about. But I was humming “I Feel Pretty” all day.
If it takes me a while to comment, I want you to know that’s because I generally don’t read your posts until I have time to read in full, and not in bits and pieces when I’m at work and my boss isn’t looking.
Good to hear that you’re doing well. Myself, I’ve been going in a different direction: rather than realizing that I haven’t been to blame for the mindset that has had me socially isolated (so to speak), I’ve been spending the last few years coming to understand that I’ve pretty much done this to myself. For the longest time (and the whole of the time you knew me at school) I was fairly bitter and resentful that I couldn’t connect with anyone, that other people didn’t make sense.
With my twin chemotherapies (ethanol and tetrahydrocannibinol), I’ve more or less relaxed my autistic rigidity, though I’m still stuck in my own head. You could say I’m spending my days in solitary confinement reading up on existential identity and psychology, and corresponding with people on the outside while I wait for my parole.
Or to put it another way, I don’t consider myself a bad person, or one (necessarily) unfit for a relationship. I may not be an appropriate fit for the Object Of My Obsessions, and that’s not her fault or my own. But that doesn’t make the situation much easier to take–I’m still alone.
“What gets forgotten here is that we are not slaves. We are not dogs in a cage.”
_________________________
“At a fair, when I was young, one could pretend to drive little motor-cars round and round a track. They had a steering-wheel which reacted to springs, but the vehicle was driven and steered automatically from below. Since one instinctively turned the wheel in the direction the little car had to go, it was difficult not to believe that one was steering it, and even more difficult to stop trying to steer it and leave it to take one where it would, for that might have been disaster. Such, exactly, is our volitional way of living.
Non-volitional living is glad living.
Being ‘lived’ as a non-entity, is subjective living, in which suffering is no longer such, in which there is no place for care and for worry, in which everything is as-it-is and as it must be. For it is ‘intention’ that it responsible for dualistic conception and the ensuing comparison of interdependent counterparts, seen as opposites, one of which is ‘good’ and the other ‘bad’.”
- Wei Wu Wei
______________________________________
The individual is just part of cause-effect; trying to change yourself is futile. All you can do is to realise this and live subjectively, which tends to release cramped energies and unstick self-made dilemmas. Endless introspection is only solidifying your crushing burden of selfhood and responsibility. You are adding constantly to a kind of ice-sculpture when you should be turning a hair-drier on it. The more you define yourself the less freedom of movement you will have.
You don’t move you, the universe does. When you try to move you, you get stuck like the centipede who begins to think about how he coordinates all those legs.
I could not have asked for two more different comments!
Russ: Wow. I would call that progress, myself…good for you, buddy! You’re really seizing the reins, in spite of what you’ve had to face with your own challenges, and I’m all for that — despite G’s obvious belief in the futility of the exercise. What I needed to realize was that my original “being made wrong” in my family wasn’t about anything I did or was. That part really wasn’t my fault. But I HAVE been in reactive mode about it ever since. And without understanding that, I’ve done myself no end of no good.
One indication that my terror of being in the wrong has lessened is that I really don’t mind that G. is solidly convinced of more of a behaviorist’s view of things. He’s entitled to his opinion; I’m not taking it as a personal assault, which is something new. Remember how I would get all defensive with Chris?
G: Obviously you’re convinced of the futility of the idea of growth and change, and nothing I will say will change that. It’s true that I’ve suffered a lot, in trying to get at the root of the tremendous “pain-body” from which I suffered all my life. (And I do mean to put that in the past tense, because it’s essentially gone!) For a while I thought first Zen and then Eckhart Tolle had the answer…shedding the whole concept of Self and living as pure Being in the present moment seemed to be the only way out of hell. Hell of course being my Self, that so called “ice sculpture” I loathed. This did help me not to feel pain for brief periods of time.
However these days I believe that (unless one has become an enlightened being, and perhaps you have, and I am utterly in the cave, it’s possible) that’s more often a kind of “spiritual bypass” — an avoidance of doing the hard psychological work my friend Russ here seems to be getting busy with.
I’d probably be more susceptible to believing otherwise if I hadn’t had a sort of breakthrough after all these years, FINALLY. If I hadn’t actually had a major shift. I can’t convince anyone else outside of myself that this has happened, of course, but I experience it from the inside out. I see everything with different eyes since Sam obliterated those obdurate obstacles to love in my heart and Lisa lifted the burden of shame off my shoulders. Perhaps I’m philosophically or spiritually “wrong” (by deductive reasoning), but I’m happier now (practically — and that’s inductive). I’ve been miserable for so long…maybe I’d rather be happy than right!
I must quote something my other favorite Sam (Rockwell) had to say about his own therapy. He likened it to washing the dishes. “It’s work,” he said, “but afterwards…you’re clean.” I love that guy!
Behaviourism has literally nothing to do with what I said and I don’t dismiss psychiatry altogether – not at all. You are wrongly conflating real Buddhism with what you wanted Buddhism to be. Everyone does that I suppose. You go to Buddhism unhappy and unenlightened, with various psychological problems, and you project your wrong views onto Buddhism.
Even though I tried to demonstrate otherwise with the example of Hakuin, you are still wrongly talking as though Buddhism is about passivity and ‘leaving things to take care of themselves’. People who succeed in the Buddhist quest are passionate, strong characters, not ineffectual escapists. Religious ‘passivity’ is a difference in spiritual/psychological condition and does not literally mean being inactive in the world or devoid of plans and goals. You can’t just make an abortive attempt to embody this ‘passivity’ or grace, fail, and decide the whole thing’s rubbish – that shows that you never deeply understood what you were doing or aiming for, which is the norm among Buddhists unfortunately.
I feel it is apparent that you are on a never-ending treadmill of self-analysis and that it would be better for you to question who it is that has all these ‘problems’. You are continually haunted by questions of free will and your inability to master yourself and do what you want. Psychiatry doesn’t have an answer for that. You should leave off the Oprah Winfrey ‘positive thinking will bring you cars and sex’ type gurus (not a Tolle fan) and confront the main issue directly, with the mindset of rubbing sticks together until a fire starts. The Buddha tried this and that, despaired of all solutions, and sat down to at last confront the problem directly: “who am I and what is my problem?”
Unless you do this, the big central problem will happily generate new little problems for you to chase after, forever.
Wei Wu Wei wasn’t advising one to sit in one’s own shit waiting for one’s next meal to fall into one’s mouth, suppressing all sense and vitality. There’s a kind of ‘will’, yes, but thought is moved, not mover – that’s what the ego can never realise. You think thought will one day do what it has hitherto never done and transform you into whom you want to be.
You are smart enough to read proper books on religion instead of populist fluffy ones – I can give recommendations if you like. Actually, all you need is Richard DeMartino’s essay ‘The Human Situation and Zen Buddhism’ – if you read that often enough you will begin to get a proper sense of what the problem is, rather than this vague dissatisfaction that reaches out for anything and everything as a pseudo-solution.
Oh yeah, that Hakuin example I mentioned was actually in another thread:
“Many prominent Buddhists were wilful and ambitious. Hakuin Zenji is credited with reinvigorating Zen in his era and was a prolific and talented painter and poet, among other things. He built a monastery from rubble, practised the harshest austerities and attracted the most hardcore students around. Nevertheless, he struggled to give up sweets, tobacco and booze – no one is perfect.
He was not – as far as we know – and egomaniac who exploited his followers like Chogyam Trungpa; I rule that guy out altogether as an example of great spiritual attainment. His story is just ego run riot, freed from normal restraint and humility, surrounded by worshippers with fuzzy new-age beliefs and too many drugs.
An animal expresses itself fully and does not lament about what it might have been or should be. Whatever it is, it is, whether that involves a long prosperous life or not.”
Huh. G., based on your first comment, I was going to ask if you were stoned–but I can see now that you aren’t.
Allow me to characterize myself, before I say anything further: I am an existentialist, an atheist, a moral relativist, an empiricist, and a hedonist. As a result, I don’t get Buddhism at all. My understanding may be imperfect, but from what I gather, the principle tenet is that life is suffering, and the way to avoid suffering is to overcome desires. Personally, I find that outlook to be anathema. As an existentialist, my desires define me, and I couldn’t do away with desires without diminishing (or losing) myself. I say that’s throwing the baby out with the bongwater.
When you talk of “new little problems for you to chase after, forever”, I read that as “life”. When I stop striving, I cease living. I don’t much like Socrates, but I dig what he said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Needless to say, I don’t think that trying to change oneself is futile, and though the universe or whatever may act upon me, it doesn’t fully account for all that moves me. I don’t fully grasp what Nietzsche meant by will, but it comes closest to explaining what goes on within me than anything else I’ve yet come across.
I love that I can get both a Buddhist elitist and an unapologetic hedonist existentialist on here. I must be doing something right.
Sticks and stones…I’ll admit to being terribly sloppy in my swapping around of terms, it’s a weakness of mine. I didn’t really mean “behaviorism” so much as any analogous lack of real self-determination. And I will be the first to say that I am the world’s worst meditator. My mind is literally a barrel of monkeys. I’m also greatly tempted to list the “legitimate” writers like Suzuki that I’ve read, and to reactively assert that I don’t swallow The Secret whole…but that puts me in that old first-date hotseat, defending a position and trying to impress upon you that I am not a moron. But we are not on a date and I don’t wanna play that!
You have something in common with my well-educated (Pop went to Harvard) evangelical parents, G…they too see picking and choosing (“buffet-style”) from among various philosophies, religions, and psychological models as a sign of weakness of mind and character. “Reaching for anything and everything as a pseudo-solution” is like something my dad would say, with no less contempt.
“Who am I and what is my problem?” — now there’s a starting point most of us can agree upon. I’m sure you’re familiar with that oft-quoted saying of the Buddha about not believing anything on authority or tradition…”but after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” Is it so unacceptable to go about things by trial and error? Why?
I just read this in Katherine Thomas’s book today (of course she is on the order of the ‘louse-catcher,’ as Socrates put it, and not to be taken any more seriously than Oprah) — “Growing ourselves wiser and more loving is not so much an event as it is a process. And it is less about perfection than it is about slow and steady improvement…Thomas Moore in his book ‘Care of the Soul’ encourages us to ‘see through our self-destructiveness and depression, our flirtations with danger and our addictions, and ask what they may be accomplishing in our lives and what they are expressing.’ In other words, he is encouraging us to cultivate curiosity as a way of being rather than always feeling so compelled to fix what we think is so wrong with us.”
As I am fond of quoting Rilke, “Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” (It seems to me Pema Chodron talks about living on the edge of uncertainty quite a bit…but you might consider her to be just another worthless pop guru, or my mention of her to be a hopeless mischaracterization.)
You frankly say that you have a problem. What is it?
At the moment, I can’t think of one…today I feel exceedingly blessed. The only problem that comes to mind is that I seem to keep inspiring the unsolicited advice of men who want to furnish me with their certainties.
LOL
Everyone has his or her own path, is it so hard to leave it at that? Why not think of me as a green fruit? Perhaps one day, years from now, I will get over my enthrallment with samsara and realize that my identity was all an illusion, and I will say, by God, G was right. Or maybe my family will have cause to rejoice because I finally realize Jesus is Lord. Maybe Russ will have an epiphany during a yoga class and admit the existence of a spiritual dimension to life, and we’ll get married and move to Northern California together as a compromise. I have no idea where I’ll wind up, I’m just trying to walk true in the meantime!
“The soul would rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else’s” — David Whyte
LOL Russ, about the baby and the bongwater! I almost forgot to mention that I’m seeing David again this week, probably tomorrow. Talked to him on the phone today. He’s so bloody easy to talk to…as emotionally conversant and down to earth as my best friend. Definitely someone I should see more of.
Me? In a yoga class? I can’t even work up a visual.
Though, us married and living in north California…sounds to me like the makings of an HBO sitcom. Ever see THE LIFE AND TIMES OF TIM?
And when did I say there’s no spiritual dimension to life? People have called me spiritual, believe it or not–I have to explain that I come to [it, whatever it is] by a very circuitous route.
I don’t have a television anymore, so I don’t know the sitcom. Is that a circuitous marriage proposal?
Methinks I have shaken loose my latest savior. Part of me half believes he just came to be a mischief maker and test this VERY newfound equanimity by telling me exactly what’s wrong with me…especially given what I said about the kind of men I typically attract. Now that would be a real teaching moment!
This week I’ve been thinking of Sam with nothing but ample gratitude. My whole life could accurately be divided up into the pre-Sam period of largely self-generated misery (though I couldn’t get outside of my rigid beliefs enough to see that) and the post-Sam period of having been freed of what I readily admit were illusions (that only certain people were worth bothering with, and that they would never bother with me)…
I probably would never have gotten to a third date with David for sure. But I’m having a lot of fun with him! He’s an unusual guy, but in a good way. I met some of his friends last night and we all got along great. Padraic has kind of fallen by the wayside for the time being. He’s cute, but has a way of handing out backhanded criticism that doesn’t feel very good.
It’s an animated show on HBO. Usually diverting, occasionally hysterical. Here’s a two-minute bit:
Marriage proposal, no–I’m not the marrying kind, I guess. But lemme tell you: if you were here in Seattle, or I was there in Denver, I’d definitely trade you some of my Sacred Masculine for some of your Sacred Feminine. I confess that on occasion I *ahem* “think” about it–because there’s nothing more intriguing than someone who is coming into their own. And it sounds like this is your moment. If others can’t handle that, so be it–no need for you to apologize for being forthright on your own goddamn blog. Who says you need another analysis anyway? Thing to do now is to assert yourself, right or wrong. Have some fun with it, for fuck’s sake.
“Always tell the truth. Then it’s the other person’s problem.”
–Sean Connery, as attributed by Michael Crichton in his book TRAVELS
“And if it gets to be too much: chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion.”
–Hunter S. Thompson, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
♥ to you Russ
Yay me!
That show is very silly.
still learning is really a good answer.
on the radio today they talked about maturity, and two callers talked about strokes of fate, which made them more mature. Sometimes this works, I guess…
Sometimes we also have to unlearn things that were burnt into our brain by some kind of shock trauma, and let’s not even start talking about the developmental continuous trauma of unemotional parents… well, ok, I just started talking about it
Alice Miller has died and her now 60year old son revealed he was beaten by his father, while Alice knew it, and he also said that she was war traumatized and could not really get rid of it – I think that was what he said… I guess Alice discovered a lot of things that are true, and inconvenient, but if she fully has succeeded in healing everything in her own life, and the lives of her children – that’s another question.
She was still learning…
And so we all do, unless we stopped learning, which means we are dead.
Do you like sitting in fast food restaurants and watch other people, and hear them talk? Since quite a while I do that almost every day, and all the employees are from eastern europe, and one of them always gives away the coffee cheaper – she’s so kind. Last time there were two russian women talking in the corner, and one of them really talked endlessly in russian, constantly in a high speed, while the other repeatedly only said “aha” “aha” “aha”, and it felt totally strange to hear when suddenly the marathon speaker used some german words mixed into the russian, I think she talked about art…
or the guy, who was from Serbia, I guess, who talked in english about how childish he sometimes behaves now that he is grown up and mature.
I just want to fill this with some words, you see
Ah, you talked about laser devices… I heard about another device called matrixmobil (you can google it), which puts your cells back to correct vibration rhythm.
“The Matrix-Rhythm-Therapy is a basic kind of therapy of the modern 21st century Scientific Medecine that settles on the matter of fact that cells of all biologic systems are rhythmically vibrating as long as they are alive.
The human body is always vibrating – as well as all endothermic animals (e.g. horses, cats, dogs) – with a frequence of 8 – 12 vibrations per second. That is not a kind of new discovery but has been precisely examined and observed for the last 10 years by the usage of high-tech video microscopy”
Please try it, and let me know if it works.
hey, i wonder if my post was too confusing or silly, or if you are ok – hopefully you’re just too busy having fun.
cu,
bm3
Not to worry, my blue Deutsche butterfly! Good Lord, has it been a month since I posted? I must get on the ball, or risk losing my fine readership. No, your second reason is closer to the truth. Life has recently become VERY interesting. I can’t wait to write you all an update. I started something, but then got too caught up in my search for “The One” (and a new job) to write!
I suppose we’re always a work in progress. Alice didn’t finish all of her business, apparently. Does anybody? She did help a lot of people identify their nameless injuries and contributed much to the field of child development theory. Too bad she couldn’t protect her own kid.
My shoulder is much better — but not directly because of the laser treatments. I haven’t had one of those in weeks. It’s probably more likely to have improved because I haven’t been straining it with yoga, or carrying heavy bags home from the supermarket. A kind friend has been letting me borrow her car.
Don’t go away, folks! I promise to be back soon!