A good day and an update, part 2

Second part of the day: the sun was setting, I was back in my Brooklyn apartment, and I looked out the window, and saw a cat, padding along the chain link fence that separates all the little backyards behind the brownstones. I was about to turn away, when I saw a second cat, jump up after him. I was curious. Would they fight like the cats normally did, protecting their own territory? But no, they seemed to be heading the same way.

They jumped off the fence onto a shed roof that was perfectly in the setting rays of the sun, and started chilling... But then, another cat came along. And another. And another. Five cats, chilling in various areas of sunset. It was a particularly beautiful sunset, and a warmer day than we were used to. I watched them move around, interact, for a while. One of them went over to a covered grill to chill. One left shortly after arriving. Another kept moving up to a higher bit of fence, keeping a lookout.

There was a section of the shed roof that made a loud noise when they walked on it, so they walked across it awkwardly, trying to be quiet, or giving up and just being loud when that failed. Another cat, a bright orange one, came along, walking across my field of vision from one side to the other, across the hangout posse, and all the other cats heads swiveled to follow it, just like me, as it struggled to stay on the fence. It seemed to have really poor balance for a cat, and perhaps that's why we were all five transfixed on it as it navigated perilously through barbed wire, razor wire, wide wooden fences, narrow steel fences, and into yards when it could.

I eventually went off to do some work for school, and when I came back, the sun had mostly set, and there were just two cats left, a big one squatting on the very corner of the shed roof, and a really small one, on the fence, as close to the shed and the squatting cat as it could get without being on the shed roof itself. Staring. Staring at the squatting cat. Who periodically shifted its front feet. What was going on? Choose your own story. I had a million and none. In any case, it was delightful.

a not so good day and a thus ironic update

Ironic simply in the fact that, tonight, I scheduled all the pieces of the previous long post, to go up throughout the next two weeks. But, shortly, in fact, the day after the good day, everything went to shit again. Oh irony.

So it goes. Just to say, retrospectively, the good days, the clear views from the mountain top, well, they don't last forever. There's always more growing to be done, eventually. I stopped purposefully seeking it out, when I was having a good time, because I realized it would find me, and I should just savor the good times, rather than ask to get back to the hard stuff immediately.

Did I mention I used to be a bit of a spiritual hard-ass? Probably.

Anyways, I'm not (as much) anymore. And I need to get to bed and get some sleep because it's during the hard times that I most need the light of spirit and keen awareness in my life, and being exhausted doesn't help that.

To summarize this part of my life into a parable: If things are bad, just wait a moment, and they'll change. And if things are good, well, don't get too attached to that particular goodness. Enjoy it in the moment. But maybe refrain from making up stories of your future life being that goodness, forever. Life get's better if you work at it. But it never gets best. And if you cling desperately to the happy feelings you have in one particular moment, it just hurts that much more when it gets ripped away. Like getting your legs waxed.

Let it go and search for the new facet of light present in this moment. Which may be beneath a couple layers of darkens.

OK, sleep.

Good to you all.

-cnh (crazy naked hermit)

[update later, when I realized the scheduled posts weren't posting because I needed to post them before the would automatically post.... never mind. Anyways: it shifted to being good again. It's gonna keep going up and down, probably for life. I don't know there's a way to stop it. But perhaps there is a level you can step back and learn to be at peace even with the rough stuff. A way of handling it that makes it better. Like, you're always going to be handed some dog poo, from time to time, but you can remember to carry a plastic bag with you and put it in that, and then it's not nearly as bad.]

A good day and an update, part 1

Today was a good day. So I should write about it. March 8th, I think it was. Sunday. 2015

Also, the last few months... weeks? have been somewhat remarkable, in a subtle way, in terms of my personal growth, so I should notate it, or I'm liable to forget that I was ever any other way than I am now. This way I've got reminders of things to be grateful for. And reminders never to get haughty about my life being wonderful or me being a skilful actor on the stage of life. Because I've been both seriously biting it and seriously falling on my face trying to do the whole life thing well.

OK, lets start with today.

I visited my parents! Yay! I think my relationship with my parents has just gotten better and better over the years. Which is great. I've also come to value it more and more.

Now I always realized I was deeply fortunate to have nice, understanding, caring, fun parents. But more than that, I've come to realize how important it is not to waste time making fights. If there is an issue that needs addressing, fine, but often there's not really anything to do about the 'issues.' So it's much better to spend the short bit of time we have together on this spinning blue ball being kind and loving to each other.

Death taught me that. Because we're going to die, and it's going to put everything in a very wide angle perspective, and a lot of what we are all doing is going to look like ridiculous crap and a terrible waste of time. Namely anything that's not about loving each other and deeply enjoying life. Or, if it has to be crappy sometimes (which it seems to), learning powerful lessons from the challenges we face, leading even better lives.

Oh boy, this is going to be a long post if I take that long to describe everything that's happened today, let alone in the past few months. Well, maybe I'll give a summary and post more details later if I get time, at least in terms of the general growth thing.

Anyhoo: Today: visited parents. SNOW! In this part of the east coast, there is around three feet of snow now in the forest. I have been in the city without time for nature for weeks and as I stepped into the woods it was like hot metal quenching in water, sizzling and then quickly calming down. Nature is water to me. When I don't get it, I burn, I crave, I thirst. But I don't die. So it does end up happening, when I'm crazy busy. Which is the base substance of New York City. It is carved out of people's 90 hour work weeks.

Anyhoo, I started playing with the snow, which was abundant, and, due to the warm day, perfect for snowballs. I stat against a tree, breathing deeply and relaxing, throwing snowballs at things. Then I started rolling a little snow ball, getting it bigger and bigger. In the same way that the snowball got bigger and bigger, I got more and more excited, and after an hour and a half I realized I had made a giant snow monolith, as tall as I could reach to put snowballs on top of it (probably around 8 feet.) I spelled out the word "LOVE" in sticks on the southern side and left for lunch, content that I had gotten my exercise for the day and feeling like a little child again.

end part one. Part Two will be scheduled for... a few days after this is scheduled for.

Home-Ec Through Neglect!

I made a raisin through neglect! In my car!

I was road tripping, and my girlfriend was feeding me grapes. (it sounds romantic but it was actually just a way to save time by cutting out the rest stops for meals.) and she missed my mouth and the grape tumbled somewhere beneath my seat.

Several weeks later, when I finally took all my stuff out of my car, as I was cleaning up, I remembered the grape and went to look for it, fearing a giant mass of blue mold fuzz. instead I found a perfect raisin, tucked away by one of the supporting struts of the front seat.

So in case any of  you are wondering how to make raisins, apparently leaving some grapes in your car over the summer with the windows up will do it, even if the grapes are in a dark location.

Now you know.

Judgments interaction with Non-Judgmental Felt Bodily Sense

It's so clear. Almost immediately, upon switching to feeling my bodily sensations, it is so obvious to me what all the judgments I'm carrying around do to me: they make me sick, they sap my energy...ooo boy, and even now, talking about it, I feel them judging that I'm judging things. God, I can't let my mind on them for a second or them multiply and scurry off in all directions like some sci-fi horror creature.

The Right Tools for the Job

I was scribbling this away furiously in my journal and realized I could and should share it on my blog. So first a bit of repeating myself to myself:

One of my teachers reminded me that I sometimes, when faced with what he calls, 'an opportunity for growth' and what I think of as a recurring pattern of behavior and/or thinking that causes me suffering (they're not really the same thing, his term is more all encompassing and, unlike mine, non-judgmental, but I'll talk about judgment in a moment.) Anyways, faced with those critical points, I often go into circular thinking patters, trying to out-think the problem, when that is not an effective solution.

Sometimes that is an effective solution. I've used my mind to dissect and become aware of, a lot of thinking patterns that weren't serving me. But there were also plenty of blocks that have come up that were stubbornly resistant to that approach. And because that was the only approach I knew about, I ended up collecting them, so eventually the issues that came up were almost all emotional, energetic blocks that were resistant to my current way of trying to deal with them.

It was like I had been using a thorn to remove a thorn that was stuck in me. My thinking removing troublesome thinking patterns (removing is a simplification and fundamentally inaccurate: it was always awareness that led to change: my conscious mind becoming aware of the thinking patterns, and that awareness allowing change to take place. As an analogy, I can't physically 'make' a plant grow by flexing my muscles enough. I can put it in sunlight, and give it water, and it will grow on it's own.)

But with some of these issues, it was more like trying to use a corkscrew to remove a screw. Sounds like it should work, but decidedly ineffective. Maybe if you mess around for long enough and the screw isn't too hard to get to, it will work anyways.

But then I learned a more effective, more free form method for dealing with the emotional side of things. I'm not giving a tutorial here, but in a nutshell, I would just dance around a bit, making grunting sounds or ranting or whatever came out, expressing physically what the feelings were, that were going on in me. It had nothing to do with, "thinking it out," and was wildly more effective with all the emotional blocks that had been piling up on the todo list. I did this extensively for years, until I was clear of the backlog, and then just as needed. I finally had a screwdriver.

However, I now find myself in a similar problem: There are a few big issues that remain, and they remain because I'm confused about how to handle them. I'm trying to figure them out when really they just need to be felt out. That can be easy to miss because the part of me that thinks verbally not only can't deal with it effectively itself, but doesn't know who it should go to, to deal with it. It is my emotional intelligence which recognizes it, and what needs to be done, but that intuitive side of me is non-verbal, and thus the verbal mind can just chatter right over it and drown it out, not even noticing it raising it's hand with an answer. Not even  understanding that the feeling I'm getting is a communication saying, "hey there, this is my job, let me take over."

Not only that, but this talk-y part of me has a really hard time letting go. Real control freak. Doesn't even realize he's being a control freak.

In any case.

I am learning.

And the challenge of the week is Judgment. I am super, hyper critical of myself. And, frankly, I'm quite critical of the rest of the world, though I try to keep that to myself, since I know in a general way that putting value judgments on others is unkind and usually inaccurate as well. I can't stop the judgments from  happening, but I can at least contain them, like radio-active waste, until I can figure out how to safely dispose of them. But this judgmentalism is impossible for the mind to deal with. If I say, "oh, I'm being judgmental, I should stop that." That in itself has a bitter judgmental air to it. Oh no, I'm doing it again, how bad of me. And thus that cycle continues.

The ability to judge and compare things is an inherent quality of our linear verbal minds, and it's not fundamentally bad, it can be quite useful in getting stuff done. Is this bridge safe enough, is this person trustworthy, is this edible. But when it starts labeling things good and bad, it is usurping the job of our intuitive, non-verbal, feeling intelligence. (I'm grasping for ways to describe this mind here. I suppose you could call it the 'Right Brain' or 'Whole Brain' or something, from pop psychology.)

It is our feelings that value things, and if we let that part of ourselves be in charge of valuing, it will do it's job well. But we get all mixed up with what we've been told, or read or seen from other people. We (I) don't fundamentally trust our feelings to guide us well, and by doing so, we fulfill that prophecy, dulling our communication with that part of ourselves and filing us with all sorts of mixed messages and thus confusion.

In any case. To conclude, the answer lies in simplicity. This whole thing can get endlessly complex. It's amazing how smart our brains can be when we're working to outsmart ourselves. We end up spinning our thinking wheels like a hamster on meth, getting nowhere, trapped in old and painful patterns. And there is no way out, from inside that way of thinking and functioning. You need an entire system shift. And the verbal mind wants to do it all so badly, for most of us. It will try to make the system shift happen, it will try to act like the other system. But it can't.

The only way out is to realize the verbal, 'thinking' mind can't do this. And let it go, let go of trying to 'figure it out,' and use some method to go straight to the feelings. Sometimes I dance around, swearing under my breath, sometimes I just pay attention to the physical sensations of my body. Whatever works for you. It can be tricky, so having someone who knows what they're doing teach you can help. It certainly has with me.

And with that, I end. Time to get out of the verbal mind for a bit.

News Blast

So this is going to be quick, because I'm busy as hell, and I don't have internet regularly. But it's been a long time since I've posted, and I want to let people have some idea of what is up with the Iz monster. I mean myself.

So, and most of you know, with two weeks left before blast off, I signed up for the Tom Todoroff Acting Conservatory in New York City. I was accepted, I have been here for... two and a half weeks. It was and is confusing to me, why I am here.

No, that's not accurate. I know why I'm here. It just sounds like madness when I try to explain it so it's easier to just say I don't know. I'm here because I had a taste of the school over the summer for a week, and realized, in a way that would take a long time to articulate, that this was the answer to my prayer for help finding what to do with my life, in a career type, and money making sense. I still don't know how exactly that will play out. It seems like it may involve acting. I knew it involved story-telling. I was pointed towards writing/drawing, but this came a long and it...it just felt so right. I had talents and skills that I have been developing that are applicable. And, the acting we're doing, I love. Like I love the improv dance I've been doing for years now.

So, lets see if I can give a good update in the next fifteen minutes. Because fifteen minutes is all I have. You see, I live in the worst segment of Brooklyn. By district, it has the highest crime rate. But, I live in a nice(ish) part of it. It is 97% black, at an estimate. Most of them are fine people. I have not yet been mugged or killed. I actually feel fairly comfortable that I won't be killed. I just stick to the main streets at try to get home by seven or eight, and not wear anything that looks too nice. Though I doubt being white helps me blend.

I moved into a house that another conservatory student had just found. When I got there, it was chaos. There was weirdness with the realtor, there was weirdness with the landlord, it's a story in it's own right. For a day or two I was wondering if I was going to come back home to our apartment with the locks changed and our stuff out on the curb, rifled through and stolen.

The apartment was not finished. We had one toilet, no washing machine, no gas for the stove, no hot water, no shower, period. With much shouting and gnashing of teeth we got hot water and the planned second toilet, sans toilet seat. In fact, everything was supposed to be done October 1st. The reality is far from this.

Internet was supposed be installed two days ago, the washer and dryer, one day ago. The internet won't be in for at least another week and a half, the washer and dryer who knows. I've come to accept that, though they may be fine people, everyone we are dealing with is full of shit. Exorbitantly full of shit.

There are plenty of genuinely nice people here. And there are lots of terrified people, and lots of people who really don't care about you or humanity in general.

my classes are amazing. It's even worth living in this insane asylum to have the privilege to go to this school. And living with my fellow students is also worth the price of admission. They're highly motivated, and it eggs me on to be more active myself, to great creative effect.

This school is for keeps. Its hard work, its uncomfortable at times, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of new things, it requires an incredible amount of dedication. And it's kicking my ass into great places.

Now if you'll excuse me, my fifteen minutes are up, and I need travel for 40 minutes so I can pick up my laundry and take it to the laundromat before the streets get scary.

Much love from the fast track
-i