1/8/17

8/30/17
I had a moment this morning.

One of those moments.  The one I had been waiting for.

The moment when the blood pumped a little faster and my cheeks pulled at my mouth.

Gears slowly slid into place for the first time in a few months and the fluidity of connectivity gave me peace.

I've been learning.

My brain has kicked high into consumption mode and the dry sponge that was myself has leaned in to absorb.

To soak it all in.

The information I suddenly realize I don't have.

Curiosity, they say, is an understanding of the difference between what you know and what there is to know.

Part of generating motivation is identifying discrepancies between who we say we are and how we behave.

We are scared of fear and of suffering and of sadness and instead of working through we attempt to override.

But feeling is the way.

To exhaust your emotions and feel in totality.

I am learning about attachment.

About mobility and the ways we have to sit with our pain.

About how every muscle and fiber and nerve is somehow connected and when part of us hurts, we have to look above the pain and below the pain to find the source.

About the option of suffering and the way we choose to be in the moment.

About strength and how our bodies compensate for our weakness.  About nutrition and how you can exhaust yourself, but your body can't grow until you give it what it needs.

About meditation and mindfulness.

About rumbling with the truth, about the stories we tell ourselves.

I asked the question yesterday.

What do I want?

I can never answer this question.

They say not to share your goals but I struggle to even share them with myself.

Do I say them out loud for the first time and risk sounding silly?  Risk sounding childish.  Risk sounding small minded?

1/8/18

We are afraid of feeling anything but happiness.

Avidly, religiously we avoid anything which might hurt, which might remind us of lack, which might create distance, which might stretch us too thin, which might put us on the ledge, which might lead to failure.

We play it safe.  With our hearts and careers and words, navigating narrow roads with trepidation.  Slowly.  Because it's scary.  We self-protect, forgetting that hiding from the wind means hiding from the light.

We tell ourselves stories about inadequacy.  Laboriously mulling over our shortcomings, the ways we could be better in order to win affection, promotion, achievement, acceptance.  We create shelves and boxes and entire closets to store backboards and storyboards, canvases for which to paint all our experiences.  The stories we tell ourselves guide the dreams we are willing to pursue, the risks we are brave enough to take, the relationships we allow to develop.

We starve connections, which perhaps only need honest communication.

We turn down opportunities, which would have maybe only required the bravery of rearranging.

We experience pain and then experience suffering regarding pain.  The pain of two arrows, as the Buddhists say.

We experience anything, and shame ourselves for feeling it.

We lack compassion for ourselves.

And we tell stories, sliding ideas and thoughts onto shelves where we think they belong.

Sometimes missing out on truth entirely.

And so the circle connects, returning us back to the mirror to examine our image.

Are we behaving like ourselves?  Are our actions and interactions congruent with who we know ourselves to be?  For where we want ourselves to go?

Are we telling ourselves the truth?

Are we leaning into curiosity and allowing it to guide us through to a life well lived?

Or are we sinking, settling into a routine, which lacks conviction or discipline when what our souls are hungry for is funneled energy; effort channeled toward purpose and rallied for all that is freedom and clarity.

What's the truth then?

How can you know?

Find the grit.  Slide your palms and trace your fingers on the surface area of this whole experience.  There are injuries, keeping blood from flowing.  There are stories, and they are just that.  Tissue, knotted up, deprived of oxygen.  Blocking healing.

What it will take to heal, will hurt.

Dissecting poor attachments disguised as compensations, stories which don't support our truth and power.  Being willing to move slowly while something firm and sturdy rebuilds.

It will hurt, and we have will have to sit with it.  We will have to show ourselves compassion for it, patience while we unload and correct our movement patterns.  Loving-kindness applied like a warm compress, where we've piled high our damaging narratives.

We don't want to do anything that may not lead to happiness.

And happiness may not be what's on the other side of this discomfort.

But, love, there's life.