A good day and an update, part 3

OK, next. Final part. Yeash, this was going to be a quick post but it looks like I'm not capable of that at the moment. I guess there's a lot to talk about. Do I actually want to talk about it? Yes, yes I really do. I want to talk about the growth that's been happening. I want to remember.

I don't want to have to deal with the headache of scheduling posts, and perhaps posting to multiple websites. (Which blog do I use? My old one that people are most familiar with and some people have subscriptions to? My newer one that only has a few people who've looked at it? Or the newest one, yet another change of name, which I haven't even created yet, but I think is a good name for what I want to do with it. Which would require actually creating the entire blog. Well, that one's not happening tonight.)

Anyhow, lets get this written. My girlfriend was going to call me... gee, I thought two hours ago. So that could happen at any moment.  And after that, I'm definitely just going right to bed.


So, my personal growth.

you should know by now, if you know me at all, that personal growth is perhaps the most important value in my life. I want to save the world, but that's not my choice to make. I can add my energy to that task, but the world is a collective creation. But by growing, I increase my contribution. And I get more satisfaction from life personally. And if I'm not growing, I feel weird and start to wonder what the heck I'm doing with my life. It seems like a waste, not to grow.

So recently...
It's hard to describe. Which is part of the reason I'm writing this. I want to get some kind of grasp of it, and thinking about it, putting my attention on it while I put it into words, helps me become more aware of my experience.

There is a kind of clarity to my life that is developing. Clouds clearing. Muddy waters settling to crystal clarity.

My passions. My passion. What I care for. I was very abstruse to me in the past. Weird but true. True for many people. It is getting clearer. Much clearer.

In fact, my emotions and feeling in general. In the past, often unknown to me. Or hard to dig up, or disconnected feeling. Now, clearer.

Though in a way, not clearer. How to convey this well... I feel aware of what I'm feeling, what I want. But not through my left brain, verbal brain. I don't immediately have words for the feelings. I just have the feelings. Putting words to them takes time. But thinking in feelings and images and gestalts works much faster. Perhaps one of the reasons I don't write as much is my fingers could never keep up with my thoughts. In fact, even talking to myself can't quite keep up with my thoughts sometimes. I just have to make a grunting sound signifying the feeling and/or image I mean and then move on, or just think it and say, "yeah, that."

It's not constantly like that. And it doesn't always or even most of the time work to figure things out. Or... maybe it does.

In any case, moving on, because there's more.

I haven't always been very visual. And much of what I've done in my spiritual training (and it is training. serious workouts. Like weight lifting. Real spiritual growth happens that way. It get's avoided because people don't understand that and because it's easy to fake it because it's much harder to measure than, say, the size of your biceps or how much money you make.) Anyways, much of it involves visualization as an element. that has gotten significantly clearer for me.

God, how much of this should I tell. I used to tell all, but since then I've gained an appreciation for the power maintained by keeping spiritual experiences private. Oh well, I'll just have to go by min internal compass about what to include and what not. In any case, there has been a quantum shift in my ability to visualize. Not enormous, but noticeable, slightly different in quality, and sudden, which is what made it noticeable.

This same growth I've noticed in various areas of spiritual skills. I think I just realized what it is: I've just finally be really seriously doing the spiritual work.

Because: I've just really seriously been doing ALL my work. I have been getting more disciplined. More courageous (a little) and more in touch with what I care about. The growth in character that I prayed for since I was I don't know how young is finally happening. I had been banging my head against a concrete wall for years, and years, making what seemed like no progress. But finally, progress. Progress is happening. It did not happen on my own. The myth of the self made man is a damaging lie. Everybody needs a little help. A teacher, a mentor, an inspiration.

I am making progress, and it is giving me self confidence. Before, I was trying to be someone who was disciplined, but I wasn't able to maintain it. I didn't know if it was even possible for me to be that man I hoped to be. I didn't know if I could change. But I see now, that I can. I have that faith. I have that personal experience.

I feel thoroughly on track. On track to fulfilling all my dreams. I'm not there yet. But I am definitely moving towards being there.


There's more. But lest you eat too much writing at once and get a stomach-headache, and to boost my pageviews and optimize my prime divisor marketing sasquatch, I shall once again cut and post the rest at a later scheduled time.

good night, for now.

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.